managers

Morning all. I qualified as a referee in October last year and referee exclusively at youth level (trying to balance coaching, taking my kids to their football/hockey/cricket with refereeing). I've been involved in youth football for six years now but it's only since qualifying and taking a...

I was astonished to see he had been at Burnley for nearly 10 years. And in the last 5 years had only spent £122 million. Don't know whats going to happen next season for them. Or even end of this season.

So I had an u16’s game yesterday, the home team my former team (I left at about u11’s, still go to school with some of them and coach one of the coaches sons at u14’s for a different club). It was a league cup plate match (I think, if that makes sense?) and I had a few incidents. The main one...

Had a pretty intense game today, but felt I handled things fairly well. I gave three yellow cards; in the first half, persistence (player A). In the second, one for tripping and another for persistence. In the second half, I sent off player A after he shouted "it's b0ll0cks" after not getting a...

Have been refereeing for about 5 months. Today I had my first real abuse, but I’m not sure whether I made the right decision. They were U8s and it was a league match. Away team (reds) have the ball and are attacking. In the box the goalkeeper throws himself to get the ball, just gets his...

So let me set the scene. I'm officiating a semi-final cup game, U13s. Team A (Home) and Team B (Away). The venue used to be an old golf club- so I was told underneath the pitch it was concrete (a driving range). You couldn't feel it underneath your feet but I'm sure if you tried hard enough you...

Meeting a team manager for the first time was always... interesting. Gallin, over the years, had created his own loose typology based on his encounters. Managers ranged from Perfect Professionals right through to Obstructive Pigs. Gallin’s most loathed manager, however, just had to be the...