This football 'respect' spiel.

[GestapoWatch]

martin84 said:

Maybe if referees got decisions right then less players would feel the need to hurl abuse at them. Pulling the game back last night for that free kick when Nani had gone clear through is a case in point. There are times when berating the referee is fully justified tbh. I remember Darren Fletcher being banned for a Champions League Final for no reason at all and UEFA's draconian appeal process meant they can't even amend their referees mistake. This whole 'we back the ref at all costs even if he's got it wrong' thing is probably the route of much angst. How many of us get 100% unswerving backing of our employer when we make a monumental fkup?

As a Blackpool fan who had to suffer some of the most blatant bias towards ''''''bigger'''''' teams in our Prem year, I still feel that abuse is completely unwarranted and thick-headed, overpaid nancys should keep their discipline in check.

[martin84]

rohrl said:

Only a total moron would expect referees to get every single decision right.

Some of them are bonkers though. Such as when the referee let the 'beach ball goal' stand even though it says in the rules it shouldn't. What about Robin Van Persie's yellow card for time wasting all of one second by kicking the ball away, 70 yards from the referee with 99,000 screaming fans meaning he couldn't hear the whistle? That could've been even worse if Arsenal had qualified because UEFA never recind cards, even if they've got it obviously horribly wrong.

I remember a Liverpool game where Dirk Kuyt scored from a corner and got flagged offside, the entire team and manager then had to inform the UEFA qualified official that you cannot be offside from a corner. Sometimes these people make amateur mistakes. Didn't a referee give a goal in the Championship when it actually went three yards wide or something?

rohrl said:

I'd be willing to bet that Premiership and International referees get a greater proportion of their decisions right than Wayne Rooney does.

Not setting the bar very high there are you?

rohrl said:

If we accept that referees will occasionally get a decision wrong then we have to ask ourselves what happens when they inevitably do so. Is it reasonable to allow a situation in which they are surrounded by grown men bellowing obscenities in their face? I would argue not.

In a sport where one decision can cost millions of pounds, relegation, administration, difference between winning titles and all of the rest of it it's not surprising those involved take it seriously. Sir Alex Ferguson has been swearing at fourth officials like a petulant child for over two decades now and he's in his 70s. It's not going to change any time soon. If refs just send them all off then people will complain that they're spoiling the match people have paid a lot of money to go and see all over nothing. For instance Howard Webb should've sent about 9 players off in the World Cup Final of 2010 but he knew the game wouldn't have finished if he was as strict as he should've been. I actually felt quite sorry for him that night tbh.