PinnerPaul
RefChat Addict
Pure speculation/random thought, so I'm not speaking this as the gospel truth, but the point is worth considering - apparently Chris K had a 'strange' game in the EFL immediately before this - foul/card threshold seemed very low and not a great performance a 'neutral' told me.It still feels to me like something has changed in terms of advice since the last round of games. There were loads of penalties given, some of which were considered "soft", could it be the clubs have complained and PGMOL have told the referees to raise the bar. If that is the case, and it is just speculation, I have to feel for the referees and VARs. It can't be easy changing your approach from one week to next, even worse for FIFA referees as they then have a different approach for those games.
And what I would say as well is these are not rookie referees making mistakes. Martin Atkinson has been one of the top referees for many years, and Paul Tierney has been regarded by some as one of the best performing referees in recent years, and he has certainly been regularly getting the big games. Chris Kavanagh on VAR is a leading FIFA official and generally a very safe pair of hands. As a manager if loads of my usually reliable staff started making stupid mistakes I'd be looking for reasons for that, or even potentially ask if it was something I was doing wrong.
Do the PGMOL or indeed the referees themselves ever feel the need to take a break for certain referees?
We are always saying on here that we ARE only human and like players, make mistakes - so surely we also have good and bad runs of 'form'
Even the best players can't perform 9/10 every week, are the top officials expected to, regardless?