The Premier League has announced stricter sanctions for players and managers who contest officials decisions.
In a move that is undoubtedly long overdue, the aim is to allow referees and assistants to do their jobs without being bullied, barracked, surrounded or intimidated by players and coaches during games.
Speaking about the plan, which aims to improve behaviour, they say, “This will focus on behaviour towards match officials, with the aim of reducing disrespectful conduct such as aggressively challenging decisions or running from distance to confront an official.”
This has been broken down into four areas.
Dissent towards match officials
Yellow cards will be issued to players who:
- Show visibly disrespectful behaviour to any match official
- Respond aggressively to decisions
- Confront an official face to face
- Run towards an official to contest a decision
Offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures towards match officials
Red cards will be issued to players who confront match officials and use offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures towards them.
Physical contact with match officials
- A yellow card for physical contact with any match official in a non-aggressive manner (e.g. an inquisitive approach to grab the official’s attention).
- A red card for physical contact with match officials in an aggressive or confrontational manner.
Conduct in the technical area
Behaviour by players and club staff in the technical area will be more rigorously enforced
- The requirements of the Technical Area Code of Conduct will be more rigorously enforced for players and club staff.
- Additionally, match officials will be required to retain professional detachment from players and club staff at all times.
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Officials and referees almost never change their minds despite protests, and regardless of how we view match officials and their competence at times, it’s about time footballers showed more respect.
Look at the way rugby operates: what the referee says goes, end of story, and that’s the way it should be. What would be interesting is if this were tied in with a more open and transparent post-game system where decisions could perhaps be put up for appeal, or opposition players could be cited for foul play which was not seen by match officials on the day.
As is customary, clubs and players will be briefed by PGMO officials about these new dictates before the start of the new campaign.
So long Chelski cry babies. Your run is over
#campaignagainstchelsea
These cries will be heard from the red corner of Manchester this year since the cry baby Mourinho is there.
Costa better watch out then. The massive thunder cunt of a cry baby!
All teams cry and throw a fit, Ozil is brilliant at it, lets not pretend any different
Giroud too
…except for John Terry.
…and Rooney.
Have you ever seen the way he talks to a ref? Guaranteed he’ll get away with it.
Does WSS mean anything to you wash_dc_gunner?
“Look at the way rugby operates: what the referee says goes” – but also, there is a constant on going dialogue with the ref, who clearly explains their decision, and can consult a video official if needed. Respect has to go both ways.
(I’m not at all saying that this new ruling is a bad thing, in fact, I think it’s great)
A move in the right direction. Football could learn a lot from rugby in this regard. I’m certainly in favour of use of video, also I really enjoy heading the ref on the rugby. Same in football would quickly stamp out some of the language when players know that the whole world is listening. I can’t believe that footballers are inherently less calible of controlling their tongues than their rugby playing counterparts.
I’m afraid “heading the ref” would guarantee you a straight red.
not if was Nigel Owens. a very good ref tho.
It’s not just rugby–every civilized sport has a more professional and impartial organization. Despite how much I believe American Football to be an inferior sport, and how annoying those refs with all their stage props can be, the way they theatrically impart their decision-making with the gusto of legal review keeps the game in line. There’s also fierce public backlash for incorrect decisions. If the FA want to keep the game in line, they have to keep themselves in line to be convincing in their authority. That means better refs, better review technology, and less decisions that are made out… Read more »
Well put. Rugby referees are always talking to the captains – if you’re the captain the referee will tell you that you need to sort out your players or face the consequences.
Football of course has a massive transparency problem, how on earth is the average fan supposed to tell the difference between a referee engaged in match fixing, an incompetent referee or a petty grudge bearing supporter of a rival team?
“a referee engaged in match fixing, an incompetent referee or a petty grudge bearing supporter of a rival team?”
Pretty much every PL ref falls into one of those categories, but which one into which?… 😀
man if you guys think footie players are whiners, you should watch some NHL hockey. You won’t believe the disrespect shown to officials. Having said that, football players have been getting worse over the last decade, especially Barca…
Yeah but in the NHL your punishment for stripping your equipment for the purpose of punching your opponent in the face and knocking him unconscious is a five minute penalty. What could they possibly do to someone who mouths off at a ref that won’t seem ridiculous? A literal slap on the wrist?
I am looking forward to the new and creative ways for match officials to be totally inconsistent with these new directives.
Exactly, me to. This is a fine system, IF the referees are above reproach. This alone, without post-examination of calls/cards/etc, is rife for abuse.
Imagine an ego maniac like Mike Dean with uninhibited powers to quell any form of players and managers challenging his atrocious decisions.
Never made any difference if they challenged his decisions
No but now he’ll have the powers to send people off for just looking at him funny. Any who wouldn’t look at that cunt funny? Even if he’s not. Funny that is. A cunt he is though.
This is great news.
Not quite be cause they did not announce limited video decisions during the game with it. The last situation in my mind is when a Portuguese player touched the ball and Koscielny got a yellow card for it. Not human nature that a player can’t insist with the ref. That yellow card may be the reason why France lost the final. Kos did not want to tackle the guy who scored the winning goal, trying to avoid a red.
I agree. Think the new rules are a good initiative. But they have to be complemented by a rugby style approach to refereeing.
Consulting video evidence will not undermine referee authority on the pitch. This is and has always been an absurd argument.
Exactly. We could say maybe it’s a pride thing. But, more like, this has to do with either shielding incompetence, or corruption.
This will suit us fine, our players hardly ever complaim to the ref.Chelsea on the other hand are fucked,always surrounding the ref like the cunts they are.
To be fair, Alexis has perfected his dissent to a fine art.
To be fair, the amount Alexis gets hacked he does have some justification for venting at the appalling treatment he gets off the refs.
According to PL referees, you can shove Alexis into a concrete hole and it’s totally fine! But if you complain about it, yellow card.
Ugh. The season hasn’t even started, and I’m already frustrated with the officiating.
Doesn’t matter under these rules. He’ll be booked as soon as he opens his mouth.
Its going to encourage niggling fouls and make the game dirtier.
They’ll be naming this the “Mourinho Rule” once he wins the league with a record number of red cards given in favour of his team.
Two wrongs and all that…
I recall a Chelski game a while back where 7or 8 of their merry band of troglodytes surrounded the ref in an “unprofessional” manner. I had a similar situation refereeing stick-puck in Toronto 15-odd years ago where, after every whistle, there were varying degrees of horseshite, or ‘afters’. After warning both captains, and then both coaches, and with no cessation to the BS, I was left with no other alternative but to inflict myself into the ‘flow’ of the game…at the very next whistle, I paraded 10 players (everyone on the ice save the goalers) to the box and gave… Read more »
Yes that was my first thought when I saw this. Tossers.
It all comes down to an utter lack of respect from these prima donna millionaires thinking they’re all king shit.
I’d love it, absolutely love it, to see more red cards shown for dissent!
I’ve played football at a decent level all the way down to Saturday league and the dissent is constant at every level, it has nothing to do with “prima donna millionaires”. The problem is inconsistency of officiating and lack of punishment for dissent. At least they’re dealing with 50% of the problem.
Brilliant, long overdue.
Hope it is enforced rigorously, the current dissent is embarrassing, our own players included.
I will be intrigued to see when the first red card for swearing at a referees is issued, going on previous behaviour it should be around the fifth minute of the first game. It’s up to you referees, do you have the balls to demand respect by implementing the sanctions at your disposal or will you hide behind yellow cards and maintain the status quo?
If they do start issuing reds the swearing and aggressiveness will stop in about 2 weeks as managers won’t stand for their players being missing for this stuff.
Great to see, now I’d like to see retrospective punishment for diving!
Absolutely agree. Diving is a huge problem. Even if a post-game review is used and a red card issued so the player who dove misses the next game. Really frustrated at all the diving, especially in the penalty box. Really believe it tends to ruin the game.
Agreed, but there needs to be some understanding of what is really a dive.
We’ve had fuckwits making these calls before like when Eduardo was called when he dived out of the way of the Celtic GK because he’d just got back from his broken ankle, and didn’t want a repeat. He didn’t appeal for a penalty, but the ref gave one.
That wasn’t a dive, it was a poor ref decision. Which had to be pointed out legally behind closed doors, but gave the idiot pundits loads of AFC ammunition for a few weeks until then.
That´s Wayne Rooneys career well and truly over.
Fuckface Terry should get sent off every week then along with that vial Costa numpty
Surely Arsene will simply insist that our bi-lingual players revert to calling Mike Dean a cunt in their first/home language going forward.
If anyone has done the Emirates tour there is a big board as you enter the tunnel, there is an A$ sized poster about respecting the referee, and then an A3 sized one about removing earrings and jewellery before a match, says a lot doesn’t it. Shame this didn’t come in during the Fergie era, they’d have won a lot less!
They’ve launched this initiative regularly over the last 20 years but it’s never applied to ManU, and usually gets forgotten completely within one season.
If only we could have this in the Champions League as well… Side-eyeing those DNA-claiming-penalty-bullying Barca c*nts.
Barca are the ManU of the CL but generally the refs in most other games aren’t too bad.
Certainly better than the low standard of the PL refs.
So Rooney will be banned for most of the season then!
No way, he plays for Mike Rileys team and they’re excluded from this.
It is great news but like all these edicts, enforcement is the key, consistent enforcement. Next up… Sin bins. Less drastic than a card and it hurts the team on the day.
And what will happen to elements like Dean who bring their personal baggage to the game? They cause teams to lose points through their in competencies
It’s not just incompetence that riddles dean’s refereeing- he is the worst type of official in that he thinks he needs to be at the center of everything. The fans don’t come to see you, mike, we watch for the players and the teams.
If the ref was anonymous he’s done a great job. If not, he’s a poor official.
Refs should be wired for sound so we can all hear the type of abuse they get. Tied with video evidence, then the culprits condemn themselves…
Too bad most of the English refs are idiots…
Ha. Let’s see them enforce this.
They should also have tackled the issue of the insane grappling and wrestling at corners, it’s far far to easy to award a free kick to the defending team, hardly ever giving a penalty…
That would produce some interesting changes.
This years numbers for ‘lock forward’ Robert Huth would have been;
PL Games played 35
Goal scored 3
Penalties conceded 73
😀
The Swiss tried to handle that with their disintegrating shirts at the Euros. Got them absolutely nowhere having visible proof that the shirts were being literally torn from their backs
This happened a few years back and lasted a month or two at the most.
Was just going to say the same thing – every summer there’s a new stricter line on dissent and it lasts a few weeks before the refs and FA lose their backbone. I’ll place money on Alexis being sent off the opening weekend (not that he should be playing!) and then the rule being overlooked for Rooney et al the following weekend.
Can’t help but think this’ll just be words with no real action
Holding my breath on seeing holding holding our new kit ?
Finally, this long overdue legislation has arrived (perhaps a coincidence in the first off-season since Blatter’s fall from grace, perhaps not) and could well prove to be detrimental for Mourinho, who instills this kid of behaviour into his teams until it becomes second nature.
He instills rotational fouling in his teams too. That’s a great way to rile up the opposition so that they get themselves sent off.
I suspect the Angriest Man on Twitter will have something to say about this!
Piers Morgan?
Some ref will use Wenger to make an example and I’m betting on Wenger being the first to be sent to the stands on the new ruling.
It’s a good ‘initiative’ if they carry through on it (but they probably won’t against their home team at Old Trafford). However they should also have a decent system for the clubs to appeal/complain about certain really poor decisions and the appallingly low standard of refereeing by some officials. For the PGMO to allocate ‘Blind’ Mike Dean to ref our games when he clearly doesn’t like us, is ridiculous. Unfortunately Mike ‘The Cunt’ Riley doesn’t have enough refs so we get stuck with Dean, Taylor and Atkinson again and again, so we can look forward to another season of Zero… Read more »
Mike Riley knows which referees he can rely on to give us a hard time, that’s why we get them so often.
Agreed, but having such a small pool of refs to choose from makes it easier for him to justify. The fact that he’s one of the main reasons it’s such a small pool of refs seems to be missed by the press.
And that’s a small pool of largely Northern refs.
As a lifelong cricket fan, I have always been surprised (and appalled) at how thuggish behaviour is considered so par-for-the-course in football. Even a show of dissent by means of an anguished expression or a prolonged stare at the umpire from a batsman can cop a hefty fine. This is indeed a great step, and hopefully will help Shrek and his band of repeat offenders in Manure and Chelski to get a ton of red cards!
I expect that soon we will see matches ending with teams reduced to 2-3 players:-)
It’s not possible unless they change the rules.
I can’t remember the exact number but a team has to have something like 8 players (inc GK) or the match is cancelled. Not sure if it has to be replayed or what but it’s definately stopped.
A team must have at least seven players in order to start play or continue playing. If a team drops to six players during the match, the match is halted and the parent association decides what is done with it. I don’t know what the PL would do if this happened, but I suspect a forfeit would be declared. There’s no way they would reward a team that had five players sent off by letting them play the match again with eleven.
“There’s no way they would reward a team that had five players sent off by letting them play the match again with eleven”.
I’m not as confident as you that they’d do that, even though it’s both logical and clearly the correct thing to do.
My only fear is that inconsistencies will make matches more about the decisions than the football on the pitch.
Many of the games already are like that.
This is a good idea and it’s about time something was done about the abuse, manhandling etc but the problem with football hasn’t been the lack of rules or guidelines, but those rules and guidelines being applied randomly and inconsistently.If some players are punished while others get away with it then it’s just going to be more controversy.
Hopefully they’ll be serious about it and it will lead to less abuse in the game.
It’s about time, far too much whining and crying about calls and non-calls, would like to see the players just get up and keep playing. While they are at it they should do something about the acting as if they had a leg chopped off on every challenge and writhing around in agony trying to draw cards and then the player by some miracle is up ready to play a few minutes later.
what a good way to divert my attention from the transfer window.
just wondering if Gabriel have seen this.
Is his English good enough for him to start swearing at the refs?
It is quite bizarre that fearing a yellow card for kicking a ball away after a foul etc has become the norm but abusing the officials (not just refs as linesmen get a hell of a lot of stick too) is pretty common place.
I agree hearing ref decisions and retrospective decisions and video tech all need to come in at some point but this should be fundamental and ahead of these.
Headlines next season Arsenal player sent off for shaking the refs hand and saying hello.
Sebastian Larsson now has officially no role on the pitch.
I’ll believe it when I see it. To me this frankly just sounds like a new way for the ref to have a constant excuse for sending anyone off any time he wants to. You know the enforcement of this is going to be extremely selective and unprofessional, with the big teams and English players getting away with murder while the smaller teams and foreign players get the strict letter of the law.
There needs to be a team foul penalty like in futsal. That would stop rotational fouling, another scourge.
Agree with everything re videos. Hope refs can now focus on stopping nuggling fouls and attempts to wind up players by twat players.
Rotational fouling was made into an art by Italy in Euro 2016 and we could do with some of that in our defence
Well yeah if it’s not penalised we have to use it.
Dammit here I was hoping Xhaka would be going all studs up into Costa’s mouth…