Dr. Gonzo

Having family in Iran makes it all the more frustrating. There’s a lot of problems in Iran that need addressing. They don’t address any of those problems. They think its more important to brutalise their people & have stupid proxy wars (that they can’t win because the West is against them, so it’s literally just a pointless waste) with Israel & the Saudis. Awful government. If there’s any justice in the world the youth of Iran will rise up and start hanging mullahs in the streets.

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That was a joke about serious human error. Probably a fucked up one but I do have a pretty fucked sense of humour. I just don’t see how standards improve if they aren’t held more accountable. Saying he can officiate for 19 teams but not 1 isn’t accountability - it’s either admission he’s biased or shielding him from the consequences of his ineptitude. Sometimes after gross negligence people need to lose their jobs. I think that’s appropriate here. The seasons just begun and he’s already made 3 serious errors. I don’t see the value in not sacking him. I just don’t think he’s going to learn from this. Especially if they’re just shielding him from Liverpool fans. He’s going to think he’s the one hard done by everything. And I don’t want them doing what they did with Lee Mason, sacking him off… but then bringing him back in to train referees. This “jobs for the boys” shit at PMGOL is a part of the problem. And it’s a statistical anomaly too, it defies belief that out of all the population, there’s 0 qualified people to officiate in the top flight from London. Reeks of getting a job based off who they know rather than what they know.

Pathetic little shits enforcing the stupidest rules of a brutal and backward dictatorship that belongs in the dustbin of history.

I didn’t call him every name under the sun, I said he should be sacked and you basically said shut up it’s been 5 days.

I don’t know if I’m depressed or not. I don’t think I am. I just think about suicide a lot sometimes and then other times I don’t think about it at all. I’m pretty sure I’d never actually kill myself. But I get these intrusive thoughts.

Do I? They’re just thoughts

Ridiculous post. I’ve hated these officials since a fucking beach ball was allowed to score a goal on us. And they’ve only gotten worse while having more tools available.

Anyone struggle with suicidal ideation?

You’re telling me it’s a bit weird I still want them stacked because it’s been 5 days. whoopdeefuckindoo it’s been 5 days, they still should be sacked. Doesn’t matter if I can’t do anything, I can’t change or influence anything about this league. I still want them sacked.

What I’m supposed to suddenly like them because it’s been 5 days?

Nah I actually find it insulting that he gets £150k base salary, a match bonus for each match… and yet the standards are so low for them that any little slight towards them hurts their precious feelings so much so they never have to really feel consequences for being shite. Keeping shite like that around and expecting standards to change is just delusional & prevents actual reforms.

He should take the abuse for how badly he’s fucked up tbh. and if they’re going to spare him the abuse, sack him off.

Darren England now won’t be allowed to officiate us, but he’s not getting sacked. Bit weird that - unless they’re admitting he’s biased. He’s either good enough to referee every team or he’s not. If he’s deemed not good enough to referee team, he should be sacked. So sack him. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/10/04/darren-england-not-officiate-liverpool-season-var-error/

That Assistant VAR is probably the most useless person in football. Do your fucking job mate, why's the replay operator the only one paying attention? Absolutely moronic from Darren England though to: 1.) not be 100% sure of what he's checking, 2.) to use the vaguest possible language "offside, goal" FFS that's like saying a traffic light's "red, green" - nobody's going to know what the fuck he's talking about. I knew the audio would make the officials look bad, but fucking hell... I'm just blown away by how inept the VAR officials are. Why do they seem so rushed when they've taken far longer on decisions that seem much easier to review the video and come to a decision? How's Darren England not paying attention to what the decision on the pitch was? Why's the Assistant VAR basically dead silent until far too late? One guy can't be bothered to pay attention to his job. The other guy can't be simply bothered to do his job. The only person displaying any competence in the VAR review is the guy who's operating the technology and isn't even an official. It really does strengthen the case that the people conducting VAR review shouldn't be the same people that VAR is meant to check the decisions of. If these people can't be bothered, bring in people who can be bothered. £100+k a year for a job that probably isn't that many hours a week and you can't even be bothered to be paying attention? People with harder jobs that take more from their day to day lives are on less than them. "Can't do anything" fuck off, they've brought players out of the locker room before. Cook's not even doing anything in the booth, what's the point of even having him there?

How was the replay operator the most competent person there? These are supposed to be professionals, yet the one guy who's not actually an official is the one who caught the mistake before everyone else. Joke. He sounds like a kid and he'd probably be a better head of PMGOL than the lot of them.

Fucking hell sack England and Cook, absolute idiots.

Oh yeah I read that wrong. I blame it on me reading that right after waking up Glad it’s being released, hopefully they can learn from it and make the procedure go smoothly for the smooth brained people operating it. Hopefully he now sacks the refs that went to the UAE and PMGOL and the FA end this silly practice of allowing refs to take on a side gig.

What’s on the audio before though

This is unfortunately the most likely result of all this. Say sorry, wait for the outrage to die down, carry on with the same old shite. And then they'll cherry pick some VAR audio to release (cos I don't think they'll ever release the audio from the disallowed offside goal from this weekend, it's either damning or incredibly embarassing for those referees, and they protect their own) and then pat themselves on the back for being so transparent. And all the while they'll keep fucking up football matches and telling everyone they need to be respected more or they'll keep doing it.

If they're mic'd up, the players would probably stop swearing at refs because they'll be more easily punished retroactively tbh. PGMOL should be doing all they can to give maximum transparency. The idea that they need to be transparent in baby steps is laughable. They've got so little integrity, they need to be making big strides to try to restore it. I'm still mostly curious about what they do about the refs refereeing in foreign leagues owned by the same people who own some clubs in the league. Michael Oliver's done a match in Saudi Arabia now & a match in the UAE - both own a club in the league. I think Michael Oliver's not allowed to referee Newcastle matches because he's a Newcastle fan - but what about any competitive rivals of Newcastle? Can he be trusted to be objective in the league if he's taken money from two of the owners of two other clubs with his side gigs? If we're not going to ban state ownership of clubs, and we're obviously not because it's far too late for that considering 2 states already own 2 clubs (and Qatar wants to buy another club in the league, don't they)... we've got to ban our referees from taking side gigs in any other country. Especially when the owners of the league are the same people who own clubs in the league they're meant to be refereeing for... but it's easiest to just ban them from taking any side gigs in any foreign leagues. Aside from protecting the officials from corruption and the appearance of corruption, it also removes the excuse of "whoopsy we're shit because we're tired since we had 2 9 hour flights in the past 3 days." PGMOL needs to have a higher ethical standard and at this point, I don't trust them to make their own ethical rules. I think the Premier League and Football League should be drafting an ethical standard of conduct for the referees that are going to officiate their matches.

Can you justify refs taking a midweek side gig for Man City's owner? Seems a bit fucking weird. But I guess it's not like referees would do things like rule out an obviously onside goal or Rodri wouldn't get away with blatant handballs in the box. Are they just incompetent and shit? Or are they getting paid to fix matches? Kind of hard to tell when they've gone out of their way to create a conflict of interest with taking that side gig.

Like La Liga & Serie A aren’t popular leagues watched internationally - “it would never happen out in the open like it has happened elsewhere in the world not even that long ago”

Nah I say that about English and Spanish refs. Because they are shite. He missed a blatant red card on Nigel de Jong’s foul on Alonso in that World Cup final. It’s not evidence of him being a good referee. That final was terribly officiated and went out of control - I’m pretty sure it remains the World Cup final with the most amount of bookings, and players lost their heads and got incredibly aggressive after that De Jong challenge because they thought they’d get away with any foul without being sent off. Italian and German refs seem to be far less shite than ours. Why is that?

Webb just talks a lot about improvement or transparency. But also doesn’t want the club to have the audio from VAR yesterday. Talk is cheap. It’s easy to issue a non-apology apology like they’ve done numerous times since Webb’s taken over. It’s harder to actually improve refs or be transparent, so he’s not going to do that.