Official Complaints
Tranmere Crest
By David Sindall
August 25 2024
A growing frustration with EFL League two is the quality of match officials. Saturday's game v Walsall is a good case in question. Thomas Parsons, the match official, was one of the poorest we have seen in a long while. His decision making was questionable. He wasn't biased, his decisions were consistently poor and his ability to control the game was questionable. An all too familiar story.
Week after week it seems to be the same. The EFL, and the Football Association, have a problem. The quality of match officials is drifting downwards and supporters are the people that suffer. In part this is because Referees have an impossible job to do. Matches too often are watched through the prism of support for your own team. I often use a basic yardstick for the decisions officials make. Take the penalty on Saturday that Mr Parsons gave to Walsall. Would we have felt hard dome by to have had such a penalty turned down against us? In all probability I think most supporters would have gone with the decision being a bit 'iffy' at best. As it happens he missed the foul on Harvey Saunders just before half time which, as shown by Sky, was a pretty clear cut decision in our favour.
From my own perspective the key is consistency. If a referee consistently pulls both teams up for niggling fouls and minor infringements it's frustrating but not unfair. The frustration comes when one team gets a different decision for the same offence. Almost as frustrating is when a referee doesn't use their assistants to help with decisions. They are no longer 'linesmen' but there to support the decisions the ref makes. Yet too often they seem to be ignored. Maybe if they were used more it could help with the upward development of match officials?
The last time I recall us having a good referee at Prenton Park was when American Alex Chilwoz officiated in our victory over Stockport. He was a model of good refereeing. Calm, consistent and sensible. It can't be long before Mr Chilwoz makes the step up to the Premier League list. Unfortunately his good officiating will then be hampered by the travesty that is VAR, something which I hope we never see at our level. I've a strong view that VAR deskills match officials by allowing them to duck out of the key decisions. That match was back in February.
One solution that's been suggested is to make the referees assessment reports available post match. This at least would add to the transparency of evaluation. At the moment we have nothing to help determine whether match officials are seen as being good, bad or indifferent. At the moment there is an absence of transparency.
As it stands we have another 40 plus games to get through. In all probability there will be more frustrations than celebrations. It's going to be a long season.
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How many times have we seen slow motion replays that show a player has had a decision for or against them which if shown in slow motion is proven to be incorrect. And VAR ends up looking at so many angles and still struggles.
The referee on Saturday just let the game run and made decisions as he saw them without the benefit of slow motion replays. And he did keep the game flowing
We would probably have had the same sort of thread had he booked 16 players….
As mentioned above, he did try try to keep the game flowing as much as he could and keep his cards in his pocket for as long as he could, which I’m a fan of.
Just think, there was 33 fouls given, that’s a foul less than every 3 mins, I would guess that’s up there with the most fouls given throughout the leagues.
Yes he could have been quicker to punish Matt for his theatrics but on the whole I thought he did ok. Looking back, I do think it was a peno and that probably influenced Matt diving at every opportunity. But I thought he was mostly consistent with his decisions, a few wrong here and there but you expect that. There has been much, much worse, who’s that baldy ref we’ve had a few times ✖️ ver last couple of seasons, he’s horrendous
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2024:08:26:13:55:35 by stek26.
Quote:stek26
To be fair to the ref, that was probably one of the most difficult games he will ref this season. I actually think he did an ok job.
As mentioned above, he did try try to keep the game flowing as much as he could and keep his cards in his pocket for as long as he could, which I’m a fan of.
Just think, there was 33 fouls given, that’s a foul less than every 3 mins, I would guess that’s up there with the most fouls given throughout the leagues.
Yes he could have been quicker to punish Matt for his theatrics but on the whole I thought he did ok. Looking back, I do think it was a peno and that probably influenced Matt diving at every opportunity. But I thought he was mostly consistent with his decisions, a few wrong here and there but you expect that. There has been much, much worse, who’s that baldy ref we’ve had a few times ✖️ ver last couple of seasons, he’s horrendous
Completely agree with that assessment. The players made it very hard for him. The first half particularly contained so much wrestling that had he started giving bookings to sort it out, I think that would have resulted in more than one red card at least. Then, he would have been criticised for being over officious. He did ok.
Every ball's a white ball