Referees/VAR in the Premier League

[Dr. Gonzo]

27 minutes ago, Whiskey said:

The guy doing the camera work is a bit of a cunt really, as he knows exactly what he's doing. 

Probably unwise to do cocaine with your mate and chat shit as he's recording you, generally speaking.

[Stan]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I mean knowing, PMGOL, I can see them just suspending him for a few weeks - maybe moving him down to the championship before moving him back up to the top flight. I don't think they really give a fuck about how things look - otherwise they wouldn't be fine with the whole side-gigs with people who own clubs in the league.

I think he's fucked mate. He's claiming it's been altered. 

But if PGMOL find it's not, there's no way he gets hired again to manage in any league in England. 

[RandoEFC+]

What on earth . They're both definitely on something there.

Incredible that he's trying to claim it's not genuine.

[Dr. Gonzo]

9 minutes ago, Stan said:

He's claiming it's been altered. 

Lmao that's desperate. I wonder how many people will try using "that's not me, it's AI" in this day and age without consideration for what AI video editting is actually capable of.

[Dr. Gonzo]

13 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

What on earth . They're both definitely on something there.

As a former cocaine enthusiast, it was immediately apparent what they were both on lol

[Smiley Culture]

David Coote comes across as a man of excellent opinions to me. Klopp was a vitriolic man who spent far too much time covering fourth officials in his saliva whilst being inches from their faces. Him getting called out on it and how he acted and behaved is fine by me. 

[Stan]

13 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

As a former cocaine enthusiast, it was immediately apparent what they were both on lol

The other guy was absolutely smashed. Had one eye on camera and the other on his next line. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 minutes ago, Smiley Culture said:

David Coote comes across as a man of excellent opinions to me. Klopp was a vitriolic man who spent far too much time covering fourth officials in his saliva whilst being inches from their faces. Him getting called out on it and how he acted and behaved is fine by me. 

You think a referee making a video where his mates can blackmail him & who decides to use someone's nationality against them when describing what they don't like about their personality is a man of excellent opinions?

Bit weird.

[Dr. Gonzo]

7 minutes ago, Stan said:

The other guy was absolutely smashed. Had one eye on camera and the other on his next line. 

Klopp should fill his nose up with gear and film a response video, for entertainment purposes.

[Stan]

14 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

You think a referee making a video where his mates can blackmail him & who decides to use someone's nationality against them when describing what they don't like about their personality is a man of excellent opinions?

Bit weird.

Klopp did lose it quite often and wasn't shy at getting in the face of officials. But it's no excuses for Coote to do what he did or said or be so butthurt about it. Or also doesn't excuse the blackmailing. 

[RandoEFC+]

Twitter feed already full of Liverpool fans who have looked up every single game that he's ever been involved in with them and taking screenshots of every vaguely controversial decision that went against them.

Got to hand it to them for their work ethic. I suppose you've got to find some way of keeping yourself entertained during the international break. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

38 minutes ago, Stan said:

Klopp did lose it quite often and wasn't shy at getting in the face of officials. But it's no excuses for Coote to do what he did or said or be so butthurt about it. Or also doesn't excuse the blackmailing. 

Definitely and maybe he should have been cautioned more and sent off more. But like you say, it doesn't give Coote a pass at all.

I think PMGOL is letting down every referee in England - not just those at the top flight. They contribute to the culture of ref hating just as much as the angry managers and fans. They have a hard job and VAR's made it harder - every important decision is under a microscope now. Referee mistakes have always happened and will continue to happen, they are human. PMGOL needs to actually put measures in place that protect referees.

The time for micing up referees, like they are in rugby, is long passed. I think the "well done lads, good process" incident indicates there's a real need for PMGOL to have clear and consistent guidelines on how referees and VAR communicate with each other. Their job isn't as important as air traffic controllers, but they definitely need some sort of strict rules and guidelines on how they communicate... like air traffic controllers... if they want to be taken seriously as the people officiating matches in a league with billions at stake. There need to be clear and publicly available ethics guidelines for referees - and shit that falls under "the appearance of impropriety" needs to fall under an ethical violation, as it does in many other industries that don't even deal with billions in any currency changing hands.

Imo there are lots of steps that PMGOL can take to improve their image, so the public doesn't feel that referees lack integrity.

But I think what Coote's done goes beyond what PMGOL could do to protect referees and reduce hatred towards referees. Everyone who has a job has to work with people they think are unpleasant. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar, imo. But if you chat shit about these people after drinking and sniffing up some lines on video and that video becomes public... it's really only on you for making those statements. He's brought his own integrity and ethics into question. He's destroyed his credibility going forward.

It should destroy his career as a referee in football. I'm not so sure it will because PMGOL's demonstrated an indifference to the appearance of impropriety when they let referees moonlight for leagues owned by the same people who own Man City/Newcastle. But it absolutely should destroy his career. I can't understand how a referee who's been caught on a video ending with "we hate the Scousers" can be expected to referee in a league with 2 clubs from Merseyside. Even if he can never referee Liverpool or Everton again, how do they guarantee he won't make decisions that impact these clubs?

I think the way PMGOL's gone about protecting their referees has been misguided at best. To truly protect them and the image referees have, there need to be clear standards and transparency at the highest level. I think considering the speed of the top flight game, fans having access to audio that demonstrates their actual thought process will 100% help most (not all, because some people are just morons and there's nothing that will change that) football fans understand that: 1.) the referees have a difficult job; 2.) how easy it is for them to make genuine mistakes.

I also think these billion pound clubs of this billion pound league should be forced to set aside a pretty large sum of money to PMGOL. We all want higher refereeing standards at the top flight, that comes from having higher refereeing standards at the grassroots level and above. That comes from spending money to properly train people. Giving them the funds and resources to want to do something that is: 1.) difficult, 2.) high pressure, 3.) comes with a significant amount of abuse - @Gunnersaurus has pointed out that grassroots refs are quitting due to this abuse.

But regardless of what PMGOL, the league, the clubs, the fans can do to make it a bit easier for referees... what Coote's done goes beyond all of that & imo it's nobody's fault but his own.

And honestly I think it's a joke he's claiming it's a fake. He'd get a lot more sympathy from me if he owned it - said his comments with his mates were clearly wrong and he was under the influence and was going to start addressing substance abuse issues.

I'd genuinely be in favour of him getting a second chance if he said "yeah I should not have done that, it was clearly unprofessional and unethical, I have a drug problem and I'm going to rehab." That would honestly demonstrate remorse... and an attempt to restore the idea that as a ref he should have integrity. Just flatly denying it when anyone who's seen an AI fake knows it's definitely not an AI fake is almost just doubling down. And if he wants to double down on that kind of behavior, I think PMGOL would do best to throw the book at him.

[RandoEFC+]

I have a very low opinion of PGMOL but even I think they won't try to rehabilitate this moron.

He should help himself and go quietly into obscurity. 

[Gunnersaurus]

@Dr. Gonzo Don't bring me into this like I told you on discord i get called a cunt a lot more easier on here 

[Smiley Culture]

58 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

You think a referee making a video where his mates can blackmail him & who decides to use someone's nationality against them when describing what they don't like about their personality is a man of excellent opinions?

Bit weird.

Jurgen Klopp is a massive cunt, so yeah, he’s bang on with that one. The PR bullshit around him was exactly that, bullshit. 

[Inverted]

I don't know what the ethics rules say for refs, but in the legal system bias and apparent bias are almost always lumped together as effectively equivalent, for the exact reason you can see with fans now scouring over Coote's entire record of decisions.

It's impossible to read someone's mind and tell whether a decision was actually because of bias or not. So, when a clear appearance of bias exists, it is all basically the same from an outsider's POV. Every single decision is just as much a candidate as the other to be tainted by bias.

And that's not an indictment on the fans for being paranoid, because (again) they have no way of reading Coote's mind and knowing which decisions he made because he doesn't like Liverpool. All they can ever know is that potentially any of them could have been. And that's why professional organisations, which need their decisions to be taken seriously, take the appearance of bias just as seriously as bias itself.

Edited November 11 by Inverted

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 minutes ago, Smiley Culture said:

Jurgen Klopp is a massive cunt, so yeah, he’s bang on with that one. The PR bullshit around him was exactly that, bullshit. 

So if you were a ref would you pop round to your mate’s house and make a similar video?

[RandoEFC+]

17 minutes ago, Smiley Culture said:

Jurgen Klopp is a massive cunt, so yeah, he’s bang on with that one. The PR bullshit around him was exactly that, bullshit. 

Probably the best call made by a Premier League referee in a decade or more. 

[LFCMike]

The 'German cunt' comment alone will see him finished, that's before we even get onto the other views he expressed and the views of the other fella he was with.

[6666]

Every single referee probably has managers/teams/players that they like or dislike for whatever reason. That's only human. Getting caught saying it is the only difference here.

Only realistic issue would be if decisions are being influenced by a referee's dislike of those managers/teams/players. If we're assuming that's the case here then it should also be fair to assume that every referee is influenced by their dislike of managers/teams/players.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, 6666 said:

Every single referee probably has managers/teams/players that they like or dislike for whatever reason. That's only human. Getting caught saying it is the only difference here.

Only realistic issue would be if decisions are being influenced by a referee's dislike of those managers/teams/players. If we're assuming that's the case here then it should also be fair to assume that every referee is influenced by their dislike of managers/teams/players.

If you’re stupid enough to share your hate for someone to others, especially on camera, you probably don’t have the ability to be impartial.

[6666]

5 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If you’re stupid enough to share your hate for someone to others, especially on camera, you probably don’t have the ability to be impartial.

Seemed like a bit of a hostage situation to be fair.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, 6666 said:

Seemed like a bit of a hostage situation to be fair.

Yeah tbf most hostage situations involve both the hostage and the hostage taker visibly high as fuck on cocaine & it's famous that many hostage takers regularly refer to their hostages as "legends" 

[Dr. Gonzo]

lol

[Dave]

To be honest, the first time I watched it I assumed it was Deepfake. Partly by the shudder on his face and because I couldn't believe somebody would be willing to be recorded expressing those views that isn't a naive teenager not scared of any consequences.