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Has anyone at all put forward a sincere defence of PL refs doing jobs on the side for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc? I really don’t understand how this isn’t a massive story.
These are the best refs in England. They are paid less than what a bench warmer earns in a week. They will obviously look for employment opportunities. If the league bans them from referring abroad they fear the refs will quit and go to middle east full time. Since these refs are the best in their field in England the league doesn’t want to loose them. The league doesn’t want to increase their wages so this is a compromise they have to allow to not risk losing the refs.
Ofcourse we can argue that they are bad refs but refs further down are worse than the current lot
It’s definitely on purpose though. You see Merson going apocalyptic against Mike Dean on Sly Sports, Talkshite going on and on against VAR, even individual youtubers like Goldbridge constantly coming out with vids against the PGMOL but absolutely NO ONE has dared to bring up the clear conflict of interest with these refs having part time jobs working for City’s owners and then coming back and officiating games for City and their immediate rivals in the league.
If you owned your own company, you wouldn’t allow your employees to moonlight after their daily 9-5s, let alone for a direct rival, openly at that and have no legitimate questions asked because apparently if you do ask, you either get a “cry more” or it’s just verging on conspiratorial to question the upstanding organisation that is the PGMOL.
Yeah even if there isn’t some grand conspiracy it opens up obvious conversations for one which for the pgmol should be a huge issue. I will say it was mentioned by Neville and Carragher that “that can’t happen” referring to refs working midweek overseas.
do you think they get paid millions ? I know tons of uni professors and researchers who took massive side contracts to work temporarily in rich middle eastern universities, it’s purely a money thing
Theres a conflict of interest at the very least with refs as the royal family of the UAE own Man City as well.
Has one of the best killer passes from deep in the world. I’ll never forget the game we played at the King Power in 21/22 when he came off the bench, was cutting our defence open from anywhere.
Shame about the physicality.
I genuinely thought he would be amazing for us last season, forgive me for that
Think he is one of those players who looks great on highlights playing for other teams but his lack of workrate would drive you mad playing for your own team
I still think he could be good for us. He could come in to replace Elneny. Crazy long shooting technique and a killer final third pass
Can he fix his stamina issue?
It would need a loan, but he’s too old for that. Like clockwork, his Huddersfield manager also mentioned the same problem. But if wishes were horses, we’d loan him to a midtable championship team with huge stakes and minutes. That’s what we are doing for Patino.
Loan. Game time. Gym. Mental. Luck with fitness.
He’s too good for the championship, he’d be a key player at a number of prem teams. Villa, Chelsea and now Newcastle all showing interest. He’s a fair bit older than Patino and should be entering his prime years.
No X factor. Small teams can’t play a “team” sport( for lack of a better word). They need an X factor. Someone who stands out and gets you those 10 goals. They don’t have a “front three” or a midfield “3”. They have no solutions off bench.
They don’t have that man.
Proof that player quality is everything. Arteta with shit players: 8th. Arteta with good players: title challenge.
Lack of pragmatism
You would’ve thought he had some Xhaka vibes to him. Slow but amazing with the ball. Don’t watch him that much so don’t know where it went wrong for him
He was amazing in 2021
Just goes to show that the opinion from the majority of this sub isn’t always a good/correct one
It’s different when it is their job to remain impartial. If a professor of Human Rights got paid his twice annual salary for a six-week stint at King Saud University and a year later authored a paper called “Saudi Arabia: Extremely Chill For Women And Gays, Actually”, you’d rightly look at it with suspicion.
on the flip side a ref’s job is easily prone to errors, different rule interpretations, and like dear old Howard said yesterday just the need to keep things interesting (lmao). Whereas if that paper got published, everyone would look at the numbers and sources provided, and those are quite objective.
I would defend the PL refs by saying that they get paid shit for the value they bring (or are supposed to bring) to the league. I don’t think there’s a defense for the PL for paying them so shit that they have to take these gigs.
I keep finding myself at the conclusion that the entire thing needs to be overhauled. We need to make refereeing an appealing option if we want to attract good referees in the future. This means we need a culture of mutual respect between refs and clubs. As it stands, only the most twisted psychos are content to go through the trouble of becoming a top-level ref, because the abuse:pay ratio is not good enough.