You are a referee yourself, but also a Brentford fan. I find it very hard to believe that you don't require a higher level of offence inside the penalty to penalise versus outside the area.
The fact they even discussed it at half time suggests they thought it was too.
With all due respect, if you're giving every single foul that you'd give outside the area, inside the area, throughout the whole 90 minutes, with the exact same threshold for what is and isn't a foul, for the whole 90 minutes, regardless of the temperature of the game, you've either been taught by some poor teachers, or you're ignoring what you've been taught. I'd say it's unlikely that this is the case.
It's been the spiel from, at least UEFA, the authorities for a while. The first time I came about, or at least I became aware, was Rosetti @ Euro 2020 (2021)
For me the credentials should be the same regardless of where on the FOP it occurs.
is the right answer
Precisely! Sometimes a "safe" foul is needed. One that might ordinarily not have been given, but is needed to stop a succession of escalating challenges or to prevent complicity in a contentious goal etc.
Yet Webb himself was guilty of some appalling inconsistency when he ref'd in what he considered what was worthy of a penalty and what wasn't.
Problem is once you get to L4 if you take that approach into games you'd be demoted back down within a couple of seasons. Clubs would hammer you, observers wouldn't be supporting "soft" penalties, and it would probably also affect your match control.
It’s not what football wsnts!
