Aleksandar Mitrović

[AyeDubbleYoo]

The standard of refereeing isn’t that bad, there’s only so well humans can do at it. And football rules are subjective and most pundits and fans don’t know the details. 

[joeyt]

24 minutes ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

The standard of refereeing isn’t that bad, there’s only so well humans can do at it. And football rules are subjective and most pundits and fans don’t know the details. 

 

And in this particular occassion the referee got the decision absolutely spot on, there was nothing for Mitrovic or Silva to complain about

[Exiled in Texas]

And fans are completely biased to their team.

 

consider how you feel about the referee when you win or lose, and then compare that to how you feel when watching a neutral game.

 

Guaranteed that if fans rated the referee after a game - winning team would be positive, the losing team would be negative. And the neutrals would be in the middle. 
 

im convinced this is why we rate overseas referees highly but don’t like the domestic refs. (We have less connection to any specific team in overseas leagues)

[Kanj]

8 hours ago, joeyt said:

 

You can't be handling the ref and then continue to aggresively square up to him.

 

You don't reckon that could mentally affect the ref?

I think refs seem to be on another planet to footballers in terms of how to carry respect and do their job. 
 

but don’t to answer your question, I think it could affect him, but I think that ref slept perfectly fine and has got on with his job and life. 

[joeyt]

2 hours ago, Kanji said:

I think refs seem to be on another planet to footballers in terms of how to carry respect and do their job. 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by that?

[Cronky]

I don't think 8 games is enough. Given that the aggression was physical as well as verbal, the ban should be twice that. It's a line no player should cross.

 

My experience of being a ref is limited, but what I found from my brief experience was that you had to make decisions very quickly. It's in the nature of football that the play switches very quickly, and if you hesitate, then things have moved on to a different phase and it's too late. In rugby, the play is more static, and it's easier for a ref to take their time.

 

I also found that, when I did make a dodgy decision, the amount of moaning I got, and its persistence, was very draining. You'd have thought that an incorrect decision was the end of the world.

 

Generally speaking, the standard of refereeing at the top level is very good. If some of the pundits were to gain a bit of experience in refereeing, they might become less strident in their criticism every time a questionable decision gets made. They tend to take it from the players' point of view too much.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Cronky

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Do know what you're saying, I think if his physical action had been worse he would have got longer. Like if he'd pushed the ref to the ground or something. 

[TheBrownBottle]

11 hours ago, Exiled in Texas said:

And fans are completely biased to their team.

 

consider how you feel about the referee when you win or lose, and then compare that to how you feel when watching a neutral game.

 

Guaranteed that if fans rated the referee after a game - winning team would be positive, the losing team would be negative. And the neutrals would be in the middle. 
 

im convinced this is why we rate overseas referees highly but don’t like the domestic refs. (We have less connection to any specific team in overseas leagues)

I was still furious with the refereeing after the Forest game tbh

[Dokko]

FA are appealing his ban and want it extended. Pushing for the rest of the season....at least.

[Kid Icarus]

10 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

I was still furious with the refereeing after the Forest game tbh

Yeah, the refereeing in the Wolves match wasn't much better either.

 

Thought Atwell wasn't terrible and let the game flow. He got a few things wrong/inconsistent, but him letting the play go more than made up for it and suited us.

[Hanshithispantz]

16 game ban for pushing a ref 

 

Why?

 

Why not ‘just’ 4 games? Why do we have to go so far beyond what is already a huge punishment in footballing terms?

 

It would be even harder to respect the officials or governing bodies if they insist on blatantly extreme punishments to ‘set an example’, rather than just dishing out a suitable punishment to fit the offence.

 

 

[Chris_R]

37 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

16 game ban for pushing a ref 

 

Why?

 

Why not ‘just’ 4 games? Why do we have to go so far beyond what is already a huge punishment in footballing terms?

 

It would be even harder to respect the officials or governing bodies if they insist on blatantly extreme punishments to ‘set an example’, rather than just dishing out a suitable punishment to fit the offence.

 

 

 

It's not 'blatantly extreme' though.

 

What would you expect if someone started verbally abusing and then pushed the referee in a snooker match? Or cricket? Darts? Why is it more acceptable in football?

 

It's not 'the passion' or 'the heat of the moment', because rugby players somehow manage to not do it. Ever. They call the ref 'sir' and never backchat at all.

 

It's more acceptable in football only because we've allowed it to be more acceptable. These incidents are a self-fulfilling consequence. They can be stopped if we want to stop them though, but it requires tough action to create a mindset change.

[Kanj]

7 minutes ago, Chris_R said:

 

It's not 'blatantly extreme' though.

 

What would you expect if someone started verbally abusing and then pushed the referee in a snooker match? Or cricket? Darts? Why is it more acceptable in football?

 

It's not 'the passion' or 'the heat of the moment', because rugby players somehow manage to not do it. Ever. They call the ref 'sir' and never backchat at all.

 

It's more acceptable in football only because we've allowed it to be more acceptable. These incidents are a self-fulfilling consequence. They can be stopped if we want to stop them though, but it requires tough action to create a mindset change.

it’s always appeared the rugby refs carry a fuck load more respect with the players.
 

(Which is the point I was trying to make earlier but didn’t use rugby as an example)

 

 

[Chris_R]

1 minute ago, Kanji said:

it’s always appeared the rugby refs carry a fuck load more respect with the players.
 

(Which is the point I was trying to make earlier but didn’t use rugby as an example)

 

 

But I think that respect is for the position of the referee in general, not for the particular ref in the particular match. Ie it's not respect the referee has earned, it's just how rugby players are taught and expected to behave.

[Yorkie]

Eight games is probably sufficient but if it gets extended I wouldn't have any beef tbh; an example absolutely has to be set. Referees are the on-pitch authority and if their integrity is undermined then frankly the integrity of the whole sport is undermined. Without referees we don't have a game. 

 

Sure, they undermine themselves (i.e. the 'refereeing collective') with truly laughable application of VAR - and that's a matter that needs resolving separately through policy, recruitment and training - but it's completely unrelated to this incident and the two shouldn't be conflated. A player being physically aggressive and using threatening language towards an official has got fuck all to do with VAR. 

[Kid Icarus]

Just going to take a wild guess, but I'd say that it has a lot to do with football being a wildly more popular sport that transcends all sects of society. Rugby, Cricket, Darts etc don't have the same problem because in relative terms to football, no one plays those sports as widely across the world and across more or less any boundary you can think of.  

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Kid Icarus

[Chris_R]

6 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

Just going to take a wild guess, but I'd say that it has a lot to do with football being a wildly more popular sport that transcends all sects of society. Rugby, Cricket, Darts etc don't have the same problem because in relative terms to football, no one plays those sports as widely across the world and across more or less any boundary you can think of.  

 

 

 

Unless I'm missing your point, I think that's nonsense.

 

There's rugby towns in the UK where rugby is as popular and the fans as passionate as in most footballing towns.

 

India, Pakistan, and Australia get massive, fanatical cricket crowds. Yet you still don't see this. It happens in football simply because it's allowed to happen in football. And it could be stopped in football very easily, starting tomorrow, if we wanted to stop it.

[Kid Icarus]

39 minutes ago, Chris_R said:

Unless I'm missing your point, I think that's nonsense.

 

There's rugby towns in the UK where rugby is as popular and the fans as passionate as in most footballing towns.

 

India, Pakistan, and Australia get massive, fanatical cricket crowds. Yet you still don't see this. It happens in football simply because it's allowed to happen in football. And it could be stopped in football very easily, starting tomorrow, if we wanted to stop it.

 

What have you said there that disproves what I've said? 

 

None of those sports transcend geography, class, economic status, or popularity anywhere near to the extent that football does. If you've come to your conclusion that 'it happens because we let it' then that's your decision and you have your answer, but personally I don't think it's as simple as the solution being that we just make the rules and punishment more draconian and that'll stop a supposed problem.

 

This apparent ideal of footballers walking around calling referees 'sir', eveyone respecting referees as figures of authority, and blindly accepting their decisions just because isn't going to happen imo. Just in this country alone we spend hours of discussion amongst fans and within punditry undermining any notion of blindly accepting referee's decisions by analysing them in minute detail, especially when they're wrong. Do you think that by punishing players for appealing, that will all just go away and everyone will make a collective decision to see referees decisions as sacrosanct? What about in other countries where it's a cultural norm to question authority?

 

You might have more chance of it happening if/when the standard of refereeing and rule-making also improves, the blind cronyism abates, and technology improves, but even then I think it's wishful thinking and comes with unintended consequences.

 

That's before even getting onto what the potential byproduct might be of giving more unchecked power to a group of professionals who are often accused as being attention seekers and power hungry.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Kid Icarus

[Chris_R]

Any dissent, instant yellow card. If that's 5 players surrounding the ref, book them all.

 

You'd only have to do that for 1 or 2 weekends before everyone behaved. It's an easily solvable problem, if there's the will to do it. There's no cultural barrier out anything to do with the popularity of the sport preventing it being changed.

 

I'm not suggesting we *should* stamp out dissent entirely, as entirely sanitising the game might change the nature of the sport at a fundamental level in a negative way, but we certainly could. And very easily, and very quickly.

[Shearergol]

Di Canio got 11 games didn't he? What did Barton get for trying to fight the entire Man City squad?

[TK-421]

16 hours ago, joeyt said:

 

And in this particular occassion the referee got the decision absolutely spot on, there was nothing for Mitrovic or Silva to complain about

 

Rightly or wrongly, I think the complaints were born out of frutsration as Fulham were denied a pretty blatant penatly shout earlier in the game, for a foul on Mitrovich, Then Man U are given a penalty and Fulham a red card when a cross hits Willians arm.

 

Again, comes down to consitency from the officials, and what appears to be favouritism for a big club, especially at their own ground too.

As for the ban - too harsh? maybe - but a longer than normal ban (3 match) was probably expected as a deterant for the future. However, the rules are that you should not put hands on an official, so Fernandes should have been punished in some way too, even if it was retrospectively following the Mitrovich incident, again to reinforce the stance (no hands on officials).

[Adam]

Football needs sin bins, yellow cards are worthless players will happily take them knowing there is very little risk attached. Once you start getting sin binned for 5-10 mins for a yellow card offence, you'll see a lot less of them. Abusing the ref, 5 mins in the bin. You could keep the same two yellows = red as now so if you get sin binned again in the game its a 1 game ban. 

[joeyt]

57 minutes ago, TK-421 said:

 

Rightly or wrongly, I think the complaints were born out of frutsration as Fulham were denied a pretty blatant penatly shout earlier in the game, for a foul on Mitrovich, Then Man U are given a penalty and Fulham a red card when a cross hits Willians arm.

 

 

 

A cross? He stopped a goal on the goal line with his arm. That's been a red card for ever

[TK-421]

19 minutes ago, joeyt said:

 

A cross? He stopped a goal on the goal line with his arm. That's been a red card for ever

 

I thought it was a cross from the by-line that struck his (outstretched) arm and he was on the near post? Haven't seen it back since the incident, so may be wrong.

Either way, point I was making stands, they were upset/frustrated that they were denied a blatant penalty themselves earlier in the match - it wasn't purely becasue of the Willian incident.

[ohmelads]

1 hour ago, Chris_R said:

Any dissent, instant yellow card. If that's 5 players surrounding the ref, book them all.

 

You'd only have to do that for 1 or 2 weekends before everyone behaved. It's an easily solvable problem, if there's the will to do it. There's no cultural barrier out anything to do with the popularity of the sport preventing it being changed.

 

I'm not suggesting we *should* stamp out dissent entirely, as entirely sanitising the game might change the nature of the sport at a fundamental level in a negative way, but we certainly could. And very easily, and very quickly.

 

I agree. They'll make an example of someone like Mitrovic but allow the likes of Bruno Fernandes or Klopp to give officials constant grief. Was Mitrovic more aggressive than Klopp screaming in the linesman's ear not too long ago? The difference is the physical contact, clearly, but Klopp was arguably being more aggressive and intimidating. For context, Klopp got a 1 match touchline ban for that. A huge punishment for Mitrovic won't stop the more systemic problem of the Klopps and Fernandes's putting officials under relentless pressure.