Premier League 2019-20 Assignments and Discussion [Rs]

Here is a possible by-law. Took me two minutes to write.

If all teams have played more than two-thirds of its games, then the results of the season will be computed on a points per game basis with the team earning the most points per game declared the league champion. All standings for matters such as promotion, relegation, and qualification for continental competition will be considered official in this case.

 

Of course there are regulations that deals with these types of situations. Back when I did sports all sports/leagues had clear regulations that dealt with how to handle a season that couldn't be completed.

As @GearRef said, you don't have to make up a new rule for every possible eventuality, you do one and allow for that to cover all.

I mean we have regulations that covers how to handle games that can't be completed and they manage to do that without listing every possible reason for the game to be called off, why would it be such an impossible thing to do for leagues too?

 

Anytime one makes a list (... listing every possible reason...), something will be left off of the list. That's why lists to cover a particular situation are not the best option. Perhaps '... any and all...' would work. 'All' is pretty inclusive.

 

We are not even 14 minutes into the FA Cup final and Michael Oliver, the English game’s leading referee, has already decided on the first sending off – although the player in question will later go on to score the winning goal in one of the greatest finals in FA Cup history.

“You would be definitely going second yellow on that one,” Oliver says, on the other end of the WhatsApp call from his home in Ashington in Northumberland. For a moment he seems momentarily lost for words. We have spent some of the opening stages of the game discussing what it is like to referee a FA Cup final, as Oliver did two years ago. The frenetic pace, how much a referee can reasonably let go, when to put down a marker. But no referee wants to give a red card this early in a final.

Oliver says he might expect a video assistant referee to recommend an upgrade to a straight red. “I might have to change that,” he mutters with the self-reproaching tone of the perfectionist. But either way, David Webb is off. First booking for cleaning out Eddie Gray in the first two minutes. The second for going straight through Allan Clarke. Over the following 90 minutes and extra-time, Oliver will decide Webb deserves a third booking. This is the 1970 FA Cup final replay, remembered in part for a heroic performance from Chelsea’s converted centre-back who headed in an extra-time winner.

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Oliver, 35, who was the Premier League’s youngest-ever referee aged 25, last took charge of a match on March 9, Leicester City’s 4-0 win over Aston Villa. Ten days earlier he had been in the heart of what was to become the European coronavirus outbreak in Milan for Atalanta’s Champions League first leg win over Valencia. Since then, at 7am every day he is in his gym putting in the work that he hopes will ensure he is ready for football’s resumption, whenever that is. By 9am he is often wondering how best to fill the day. How about, I wondered, re-refereeing the entire 120-minute 1970 game between Leeds United and Chelsea, notorious for its full-blooded, old-school, kick-and-be-kicked intensity?

The 1970 replay has been re-refereed before. In 1997, David Elleray, then considered the English game’s most senior referee, awarded six red cards and 20 yellows to the 23 players who appeared that day at Old Trafford (for some reason, Don Revie never saw fit to call upon his one substitute, Mick Bates). Elleray’s card-count was an increase on the numbers recorded by the referee on the day, Eric Jennings of Stourbridge, then 47 and resplendent in white collars the size of which would be considered large even in the 1970s. Jennings booked one player, Chelsea’s Ian Hutchinson, who died aged 54 in 2002, and was one of his side’s outstanding performers that day.

Chelsea FC football players (clockwise from top left), Alan Birchenall, John Hollins, Peter Osgood, John Dempsey and Ian Hutchinson CREDIT: GETTY CREATIVE
At the end of two gruelling hours on YouTube, Oliver, a man who has refereed the big six in the Premier League many times and himself awarded a penalty to Chelsea in the 2018 FA Cup final, looks at his notebook in wonder. A lot has changed in 50 years. Oliver has dished out 11 red cards, two of which were for Chelsea’s Eddie McCreadie. Of the 16 bookings there are three apiece for Webb, Hutchinson and Charlie Cooke. Seven of the reds are for Chelsea players as well as Norman Hunter, Eddie Gray, Jack Charlton, and Billy Bremner.

“It’s amazing to watch them – not a single player ever appeals to the referee,” says Oliver as Webb, technically sent off by now, thunders into another challenge. “Eddie Gray just gets up. You didn’t get the reaction then that you do now. And what you also don’t get is 20 more players running into the situation in the aftermath. Which [nowadays] means you invariably end up with more hassle and more cards anyway.”

He looks on in amusement at first and then later, as he gets used to the rhythm of the game, he senses something else. “For want of a better explanation,” he says after a while, “it’s almost ‘proper football’. They kick each other and get on with it and never complain”. As for the implacable Jennings, refereeing his last game before going back to his day job at a water treatment company, I venture the observation that he does not seem to be moving very much.

“By saying ‘not moving very much’, do you mean not moving at all?” asks Oliver – and it is hard to argue. The modern referee has to pass his pre-season fitness test every summer but Jennings, who died in 1988, could be said to be keeping an eye on the game rather than officiating it. He barely leaves the centre circle. When at last he does take Hutchinson’s name it seems more to give himself something to do. Even as Chelsea fall under intense pressure around 20 minutes in and the tackling becomes more reckless, the genial Jennings largely stays out of it.

“Each tackle gets a little bit worse there,” Oliver says of one fraught passage of play. “[In the modern day], you’d be looking for a reason to calm everyone down. All you get there are five or six tackles in 15 seconds that get progressively worse.” Suddenly the next two red cards in the game come, from an exchange of blows between McCreadie and Hunter. “They throw a couple of punches and get on with it,” Oliver says. “Now everyone would be in. A lot of the time those players coming in are genuinely trying to separate people but it’s hard to convey that. If a player sees someone run in from the other side, then he runs in.”

We are now playing 10 v 9 and the first half has only just passed its midpoint. Only once did Oliver show three red cards in a game: Leeds v MK Dons, April 2010, with two of them late on. He decides that Mick Jones, the Leeds centre-forward, should be booked for a charge on Peter Bonetti. After prolonged treatment, the Chelsea goalkeeper, who died aged 78 this month, is never the same for the rest of the match. “If he needs treatment then he is genuinely hurt,” observes Oliver.

Oliver was what you might call a referee prodigy, the son of a Football League referee, Clive. Michael took charge of his first game aged 14 in 1999 in the Under-11s Coast Colts League in Northumberland. Within eight years he had refereed his first Football League game. He would have refereed his first Premier League game aged 24 but Fulham v Portsmouth in January 2010 was postponed and a week later a scan revealed he had been trying to run off a broken leg.

He spots a bad tackle by Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris on Gray that is not immediately recognisable as such on the old BBC footage. “This is the infamous one where he can never win the ball,” Oliver says, and deconstructs it swiftly. The ball is on the floor and Gray has nicked it around Harris. The challenge is with a straight leg and Gray is holding the back of his knee in the aftermath. Oliver is piecing together the evidence that confirms what he saw in the moment. “The fact that Ron Harris is apologising shows that he knows what has happened.” It is a red card for Chopper.

By half-time Gray is off too, for a retaliatory stamp on Hutchinson. As he blows his whistle for the break we wonder whether Jennings retires to the referee’s room for a traditional cup of tea. Oliver and his two regular assistants Stuart Burt and Simon Bennett have an energy drink at the break. They take it in turns to bring in sweets – Squashies, Jelly Babies. Their hope is always that the game goes smoothly and their contribution is unremarked upon, although that does not mean intervening as little as possible.

Oliver’s highest-profile decision was dismissing Gianluigi Buffon in a 2018 Champions League quarter-final after awarding a penalty against Real Madrid that gave them a late victory. Buffon lost the plot in the aftermath – “the referee has a rubbish bin for a heart,” was among his early post-match outbursts. The goalkeeper later apologised. Oliver received death threats in the interim.

Oliver was right on both counts that night – penalty and red card – and yet he was attacked by a famous footballer which had the effect of rallying the worst kind of online abuse. Referees are not permitted social media accounts and in the circumstances that is probably wise. No-one stands up for them. Why, the eternal question goes, would you want to be one?

Oliver was a good schoolboy footballer, and attended the Newcastle United academy for a while, “a centre-half who didn’t tackle or head – a mystery why I didn’t make it!” He was captain of his school team, played for a local club, for the county and then at Newcastle alongside Michael Carrick’s brother Graeme. Playing and training every night, he fell ill and made a decision to have a year out. “My dad suggested I do the referee course as a way of picking up some extra pocket money,” he says. After two years of junior football he began refereeing the adult game and progressed with remarkable speed.

Into the second half and Peter Osgood takes action to evade a bad Jack Charlton tackle that is intended to hurt. The Leeds defender, another Ashington boy, is off - the sixth red card before the hour. The game is starting to feel wild. Osgood and Bremner are both, Oliver decides, on final warnings. Webb is on his third booking. Hutchinson gets his second yellow, the seventh dismissal. Then Bremner and Charlie Cooke go off for their second yellows. Chelsea are down to six players and, technically speaking, it would be match abandoned. It is Cooke’s assist for Osgood’s equaliser on 78 minutes.

As Leeds press for a winner before the end of the 90 minutes, Oliver spots a second red for McCreadie, the tenth of the match, for a high boot on Bremner and what should be a penalty for Leeds. “He’s effectively kicked him in the head.” Extra-time looms. “At this point, in a game like this, as a referee,” Oliver admits, “you’re just praying for someone to score.”

Osgood is the eleventh and last red card in extra-time, a second booking for a foul on Leeds goalkeeper David Harvey. He was, after all, on a final warning. We discuss the infamous career-changing foul by Emlyn Hughes on Osgood in 1966 that broke the latter’s leg - after which he was never the same. “You don’t get people who go out to do others now,” Oliver says, “you don’t get the tackles now where people try to hurt each other.”

Webb’s scrappy header makes it 2-1. Sensing victory the Chelsea support do something that would now invite immediate expulsion from Stamford Bridge. They sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Oliver recalls his first Premier League game in August 2010 when he blew the final whistle at St Andrews just as Morten Gamst Pedersen struck a shot that would have been the equaliser for Blackburn Rovers. “Had it gone in that would probably have been the start and end of my career,” he reflects. “It just went into the side netting.”

His last booking of the 16 is for the Chelsea substitute Marvin Hinton. By the end though, something strange has happened to Jennings – he seems to be running more. “Second wind?” wonders Oliver. The final whistle goes and Oliver has spotted 11 red cards, five more than Elleray dismissed in the same exercise more than 20 years ago. “It’s moved on again, hasn’t it?” says Oliver. The players are exhausted but there is no aggression or feuding after the whistle, just handshakes and commiserations to the losers. Mr Jennings is off to get his medal, reflecting, one assumes, on a good evening’s work.

 

I might suggest that Eric Jennings was an early pseudonym of one Mario Escobar...

I've heard Brian Hall is interested in Mr Jennings' contact details too so if anyone could pass them on it would be much appreciated.

 

This is lots of fun but highly unrealistic. If the referee had been very strict from the start and handed out a couple of yellow cards, and maybe a red, it is likely that the players would get the message and the heavy tackles would stop. As it was they played to the usual standards secure in the additional knowledge that nobody had ever been sent off in an FA Cup Final, and most likely never would be for the foreseeable future.
(The first sending off in an FA Cup Final was not until 15 years later, in 1985 and indeed only 4 others since then, all after 2004. It is still a very rare occurrence.)

I imagine this exercise could be done with quite a few Cup Finals with similar results. One certainly would be the 2010 World Cup Final although I will predict that won't be done any time soon.

PH

 

I’ll put this here since it probably affect the return of the Premier League most, but apparently if they restart, the don’t have to continue using VAR.

It’s at the bottom of the article linked below.

https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/new...petition-organisers?__twitter_impression=true

 

Short term, I think the VAR allowance is more interesting. It gives EPL an out if they don’t want to use what has been the most controversial aspect of the season prior to the shutdown. If EPL restarts without VAR, it gives an indication of VAR’s future. EPL restarting without it, even under the guise of technical limits, would be a potential death knell for VAR. Quite a reversal.

The substitution rule is something of a fate accompli. The rule has evolved over the years. I don’t think there is a question of whether FIFA will modify the laws to allow substitution for things like concussion testing, it’s a question of what form it will take - can they come up with a fair temporary sub rule. There are plenty of options, eventually they’ll pick one.

 

I also am intrigued, almost to say excited about the five subs. But isn’t it more about injury and fixture congestion than hot weather? To be sure, heat injuries take time to recover from but to my knowledge heat exposure isn’t additive over games like the micro tears and cell death that are. Meaning, if you don’t suffer heat exhaustion in a game, you aren’t more likely to get it in the next hot game three days later. I could be way off tho.

 

Tbf there have been rumours in the UK media about not having VAR if/when the season resumes since before this was announced. Not that I think this will make VAR disappear long run but still.

 

I’m probably not in the majority here, but I think 5 subs changes the tactical nature of the match in a very pointed way. Liverpool’s (and Klopp’s) high press becomes the norm with more opportunities for fresh legs. Then Route One football makes a big return. Playing out the back loses its luster, and aerial duels ensue. Not exactly tiki-taka.

 

It’s a populist move by IFAB and that’s about it. Let’s hope it doesn’t become engrained.

I fear it’ll likely be here to stay.

 

Once upon a time, soccer was also a game of endurance and resilience. Substitutes were called "reserves" and were only called upon in case of injury.
That has, as we have all seen, gradually evolved, but I think it would be sad to see it go too far to the point of 5 subs.

 

And if you go back a bit farther, there were no subs at all—if someone was injured, you just played short.

 

Premier League to return on June 17 after 100-day break amid coronavirus- finally a reason to watch tv again! but in all seriousness, I am just hoping health wise, everyone will be okay

 

So...the 5 subs are official. EPL says it's "temporary".
I think it's the beginning of the end of "stamina" being part of the sport.

 

IFAB said that it was temporary too... and without the quotes.

As things stand, only for competitions that will be completed in 2020.

Circular 19 <https://static-3eb8.kxcdn.com/documents/843/113921_080520_IFAB_Circular_19_2020_EN.pdf> states: