Referees. Useless.

But it's not like they get any support from anywhere, is it? I think it's a nightmare job which none of us could do. There has to be something wrong with you to want to be a referee in such a world.

Managers don't take responsibility. Players don't take responsibilty. Fans spend every game trying to intimidate the opponents and the officials into making decisions in our favour: often yelling abuse at the ref when we have no idea if they've just made a bad decision or not.

Football is tribal. Nobody anywhere is interested in fairness. If we were, we'd decry Hoolahan for diving yesterday instead of laughing, shrugging it off and saying "these things even themselves out". And in the big clubs' cases, they know that the more pressure they put on refs, the more likely they are to get bad decisions in their favour next time. Ferguson and Mourinho have made whole careers out of that; Mourinho especially is a genius at getting the whole football world to discuss whatever he decides this weekend's controversial topic is.

The only thing I think which MUST change is that managers must have the right to say whatever they like about referees without being sanctioned; and referees must have the right to reply. We're supposed to live in a democracy - and not giving refs the right to respond makes them look like faceless, petty authority figures. But if a manager criticises one of his own players, he quickly finds himself out of a job - and if we all gave referees respect and understanding, football just wouldn't be football.

Posted By: thebigfeller, Feb 22, 17:25:11