"Give us a penalty, Howard, or I'll give you an F!"
There are probably many reasons we could use to highlight the Stoke City manager’s predilection for idiocy, but I think his comments about referees will do the job just fine.
In short, Pulis thinks that managers should be able to vote on all the game officials at season’s end, with those rating lowest getting relegated to the second tier of English soccer to be replaced by the three best from that division.
His exact words: “Over the weekend I’ve thought about it, I wanted to come here and be constructive. I think being constructive I’d say we should put in place a system where every Premier League club has a vote at the end of the season on referees, and the bottom three referees should be relegated to the Championship and the top three in the Championship should be promoted.”
I’m sure that there’s absolutely no way that such a vote could get royally ruined, is there?
We’ll attack our cap-loving, thug-inciting coach a number of ways:
1. Pity the nPowership, who’d get lumbered with the worst referees from the EPL while their best get plucked from their perches to preside over those high-profile games that every ref dreams of mishandling. It’s like being the a**hole in that great college drinking game of the same name. You give the President your two best cards, and you get stuck with his pair of threes to be in an even worse position. How is that fair?
2. OK, so maybe ol’ Tone is speaking off-the-cuff and hadn’t considered the ramifications of deliberately putting poor refs into the lower leagues where their havoc will be caused away from the glare of the media spotlight. We can forgive him that.
However, what about this proposed vote? You really think that Sir Alex, Big Sam, Arsene and co will vote fairly and squarely? Consider that they complain about the ref after just about every game in which their teams didn’t win 5-1. It’s impossible to make the managers happy: they’ll complain about yellow cards that should have been red, penalties given or not given, controversial goals, questionable offsides calls… you name it, they’ll moan about it before threatening never to speak with the media again.
In short, I wouldn’t trust them with a vote as much as I wouldn’t trust Pete Doherty to look after my giant block of heroin.*
Add to the fact that the game result always affects their mood towards the referee, and I doubt that any of them are able to be any more unbiased or impartial than Sepp Blatter when it comes to election campaigns.
The referee system currently in place since the Pleistocene Era isn’t perfect—far from it, in fact—but the absolute last people you want in charge of their evaluation process are the men trolling the sidelines while carrying a genetic predisposition to automatically hating and disagreeing with the man holding the whistle. The antagonistic relationship between soccer managers and the custodians of the game is well-documented and visible every weekend. To put one in charge of the other would be tantamount to madness.
Fix the system another way, Tony, or focus on making your team more likable. Last night’s barnstorming 3-2 win over Birmingham was step one of the process.
*Note: I don’t have any heroin, nor have I ever, nor do I plan to. But if I did, I wouldn’t leave the Babyshambles/Libertines frontman in charge of safe-keeping
Jonathan Wilson, your TACTICS! high priest, disagrees.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/nov/10/tony-pulis-referees-relegation
Except that it’s not Jonathan Wilson who wrote that, but PAUL Wilson. Check your eyesight. Actually, don’t. You could ref with piss-poor vision like that
Tsk tsk. The advertisers will not be pleased to discover your habit, James.
I think referee relegation is a fabulous idea. Having managers determine it, not so much.
Let’s not pretend that Powership referees aren’t already inferior to Premier League referees, there’s a reason they are in the Powership, so I don’t think it would be “lumbering” them at all.
Why should refs who are known to suck be allowed to stay in the top flight (or ref CL & WC finals)?
I don’t agree with the managers doing the sole voting, though. Why can’t we get computers to analyze the moans of fans at the game and at home? If the level of moaning is more or less even=good ref; Uneven=bad ref.
I wonder what referees’ contracts with the leagues say in terms of how they’re evaluated, etc. etc. etc.
@Jacob: You would have to create a special weight for Arsenal games, then, given the invariable levels of moaning.
@JT: damn…just saw the wilson and skimmed the article. regardless, jonathan wilson still disagrees whether he knows it or not.
Not if they mic’d up your house, Pups.
I wonder how it would work in practice though, it’s relatively easy to evaluate Premier League refs because every game is on television at some point, but what about the Championship?
Obviously, it’s can’t be judged on moans. The percentage of females in the crowds would throw off the accuracy.
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I think it’s relatively easy with replay for an independant board to review calls from each PL game each week to determine a ref’s accuracy (or not). These could/would be the same people who step in to issue after-the-fact cards for missed calls, etc. At the end of the year, their scores/notes are analyzed and the 3 refs with the highest percentage of incorrect calls/general errors get relegated.
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I agree that those people with high error marks should also not be allowed in UEFA’s CL ref pools, etc. The only problem with this is that it could start in England, but would the rest of the European countries adopt the same system? If not, any international match could still end up with cr*p refs.
@Jacob: Sed contra. I’m a quiet puppy. Although I do have roommates who like their loud sex. So in that case, perhaps.
@Pups-Well, your blog alter ego sure is loud when Spurs lose.
@Jacob: That’s because Spurs losing is absurd. Let me put it in terms you’ll understand: Spurs losing = Mark McGhee keeping his job. WAT.
WAT indeed.
Oh, the AFC board met on McGhee. No consensus, no action.
@Jacob: No consensus? WTF are they waiting for? Actual relegation?
@Jacob: Uh oh. Does this mean we’re creeping towards Board OUT, if they don’t get their sheets together?
@ JJF3: Perhaps they’re waiting for the Aberdeen WAG protest calendar?
@All-Who knows? As I’ve said before, McGhee is better at talking his way out of trouble than staying out of it in the first place.
“You could ref with piss-poor vision like that”
Hey! I have 20/15 vision!
Wanker.
Oh snap.
It was a joke, Dustin, but thanks for giving me beans!
@Jacob: Maybe McGhee should go to law school.
I have 20/13 vision. Suck it
I have like 40/400 vision. Aw yeah, bitches, I’m blindsies.
@Anon
I would have never guess you have glasses. I’m picturing you know… Yankees and Spurs fan, studying to be a lawyer… Got it.