Winning points is hard enough without having to battle the referee every week too
As a Sunderland fan, there were many things about getting out of League One that I was happy about, and getting away from awful refereeing was one of them. How could I have been so stupid?
For some reason, I thought that refereeing standards in the second tier of the English professional game would be, at the very least, not horrendous. After all, horrendous refereeing on a weekly basis is what we had to get used to in League One. However, its clear now that the standard in the Championship is not actually any better at all.
And complaining about referees is something that I genuinely hate to do. My general attitude is that they have a much harder job than we realise.
Modern football is so fast and thee pressures are huge, especially with the ugly scenes we have witnessed lately of whole teams crowding a referee trying to influence his decisions. So, honestly, I try my best to defend them where I can and at least understand them if I can’t.
The problem is that it is quickly becoming impossible to do either. Awful decisions that have a direct impact on results are becoming the norm, and when it’s the norm we are no longer talking mistakes – we are talking about standards.
The latest of which was a clearly offside goal allowed to stand – the winning goal, as it turned out – in the 2-1 defeat to Sheffield United. It was not even a difficult one to get right as it was a set-piece.
It was clear from [Sheffield United manager] Paul Heckingbottom’s comments after the game that this is something that is afflicting the whole division far, far too often.
"If I am Tony, I am claiming for that 100 per cent but we are due about another dozen of those,” Heckingbottom said. “We want another one of those every game.”
That is a little insight into the overall standard of the division, but it’s scant consolation for Sunderland fans. The same can be said for the apology the officials apparently offers the Sunderland coaching staff after the game.
The reality is that it is starting to feel like a real Sunderland-specific problem. Again, I am sure it’s not, but it feels that way.
It’s worth noting that the referee who made the ‘mistake’ against Sheffield United was the same one who booked Patrick Roberts for diving in the FA Cup at Shrewsbury when it was a clear penalty.
Sunderland ended up winning that game, but only just. That mistake could have easily decided the result of that day, but the fact it didn’t was not enough to stop Roberts taking understandable offence.
"Patrick Roberts is really upset about it because he feels it's a stain on his character," Mowbray said afterwards.
"I've seen a still image and he's been cleaned out, it's right on the shin. It's frustrating, I know I sometimes moan about officials because I expect higher standards than we get some weeks.”
The previous home game was another refereeing horror-show with the referee appearing to make up his own rules about how to restart the game after it has stopped for a head injury. Tony Mowbray game onto the pitch at half-time to ask for an explanation. He didn’t get one. He got a yellow card instead.
And that is the kind of situation that perpetuates the problem.
For all intents and purposes, there will be no accountability for Matthew Donohue, the referee who made the mistake in the Sheffield United game. He might get demoted to a lower level for a week, or even get a weekend off, but that will be it.
Certainly as far as fans are concerned, we never hear anything, we never see anything, we never get explanations and apologies. We definitely don’t witness any kind of humility.
What we see is a manager trying to open a dialogue and get yellow-carded for the question. We see people fined and publicly punished for speaking out against it and pleading for something to improve. We see the same old referees turning up making the same horrendous decisions most week.
The solution, as we know, is VAR. Obviously VAR has its detractors and you are never going to find a system that eliminates all debate, but it does at least create trust that the big and obvious mistakes have, generally speaking, become a thing of the past because of it.
It seems incredibly unlikely that the EFL will use VAR though due to the cost. Every ground has to have the system installed and then there is an annual subscription cost as well. Clearly the EFL aren’t going to pay for that, and they cannot pass the cost onto the clubs whilst at the same time pleading with the Premier League for more money because too many clubs are facing financial peril.
Without VAR, it’s hard to see how it could possibly change. After all, we have seen first hand what happens when a manager tries to seek clarity. He is dismissed from sight and cautioned for so much as thinking about challenging a decision.
And, if no one is allowed to talk about it, how on earth can it change. Shortcomings are not being acknowledged, never mind fixed.
That is the frustration element, but the anger is something much harder to rationalise.
Other clubs will have awful decisions go against them, I realise that. The problem I have is that, genuinely, I can only remember awful decisions this season going against Sunderland, never in Sunderland’s favour.
Perhaps that is a product of the anger and maybe I am just too close to it to see obviously incorrect match-changing decisions go in Sunderland’s favour, but I don’t think that’s it.
The Sheffield United one… well, there was at least one stonewall penalty Sunderland should have had too, so Sheffield United ones… the Stoke one, the Coventry ones… how could I nearly forget the Coventry ones?!
Then there was the Blackburn away game earlier in the season, which might just have been the most remarkable of the lot. It feels like there are genuinely too many to mention. And that is not even including the awful smaller decisions like a failure, or flat-out refusal, to deal with blatant persistent timewasting literally every week at the Stadium of Light.
They are not ‘evening themselves out’ over the course of the season, as is often the defence. It only ever gets worse to the point now when it’s pretty much happening every week to Sunderland.
You have to ask why that is? I mean, it’s impossible not to at this stage. I have often wondered whether referees turn up at the Stadium of Light determined to not allow the crowd to influence them and end up subconsciously overcompensating by favouring the opposition instead. If so, that’s just pure mental weakness and it excuses nothing, but it at least might explain some of it.
It is reaching the point where it is becoming genuinely demoralising. Sunderland already have to fight against established Championship clubs, a much bigger wage budget every week, and an injury list that would make Darren Anderton wince – they shouldn’t have to battle the referees every week as well.
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