Howard’s web
REF BOSS HAS TO CLAMP DOWN
HOWARD WEBB knew Rome wouldn’t be built in a day when he accepted the job of giving English football some referees we could all be proud of.
But within a matter of months the empire the PGMO chief operating officer is attempting to build is in danger of crumbling before the foundations have even been put in place.
In recent weeks two issues have become depressingly clear and even more depressingly familiar.
Top-level footballers still like to pull the wool – and top-level referees continue to let them get away with it.
This perfect storm is now making the national sport a laughing stock. Let’s start with Bruno Fernandes. He’s the Manchester United captain who acted like he’d been shot in the face, when in fact it appeared minimal contact to his chest area had been made following a challenge from Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konate at Anfield.
Referee Andy Madley, sensibly, decided to do nothing.
And while we’re on the subject of Liverpool’s seven-goal romp, Fernandes also shoved a linesman towards the end of this game, but got away with that as well. Then we come to Norwich defender Max Aarons.
Aarons is the one who threw himself to the grass without being touched and then grabbed the ball, while backtracking in a recent game with Sunderland in the Championship.
He didn’t even wait for the contact before producing his Oscar-winning moment, which is a good job, because no contact was forthcoming.
And yes, you’ve guessed it, hapless referee Tim
Robinson gave a free-kick to the Canaries.
Earlier this season West Ham were left seething when Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy appeared to fake a shoulder problem to help Graham Potter’s men see out a 2-1 win at Stamford Bridge.
If organisations like the FA, Premier League and EFL continue to ignore this growing problem they are effectively enabling the fakers.
In hindsight, the likeable and intelligent Webb, it has to be said, might now be regretting accepting a challenge even he might not be able to meet.
But the answer is retrospect, not hindsight, in the form of strict action being introduced either during or after the event of something punishable happening on a football pitch.
Referees get things wrong, we all know this.
They’re human, and their jobs are now being made even more impossible by those people they are paid to control. But things would soon change if a player deemed to be feigning injury was sent to a sin-bin for 10 minutes, or if someone like Aarons was given a red card retrospectively for two bookable offences in the space of seconds and banned for three games.
If VAR can look at replays of penalty claims and offsides, why not these?
Or even misconduct, like when one player cajoles an official into sending off a rival following a foul, by pathetically waving an imaginary card in the air?
This happened in the Six Nations at Murrayfield, when Ireland’s Andrew Porter encouraged referee Luke Pearce to send off a Scottish opponent in the second half.
The response he got was brilliant, when Pearce turned the tables and told Porter to shut up, otherwise he would be the one heading for an early bath.
And he did, because it never happened again.
Just imagine a football referee doing the same in a Premier League game? No chance. Football appears too arrogant to learn from other sports or even its own mistakes, but things need to change and fast. And it all starts with Webb.