Mike Dean has apparently admitted he got it wrong when he awarded West Brom a penalty in the dying stages of the 1-1 draw on New Year’s Eve.
The official saw the ball hit Calum Chambers arm and incorrectly adjudged it to have been deliberate handball. It sparked huge controversy, with Arsene Wenger subsequently picking up a three match ban for comments made to Dean after the game.
Now, according to Mike Riley, head of PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited), he’s owned up to his error and said that had VAR been in play the decision would have been overturned.
Speaking about the use of technology to assist referees, Riley said, “I think Chambers would have been overturned. The question you ask is, is it an act of deliberate handball?
“And the reverse angle shows him trying to bring his arm out of the way of the ball, rather than the reverse.
“I know Mike would have overturned it. He messages people, and he’s a very honest guy, and he goes, ‘I got it wrong’. He knows he did.”
A very honest guy indeed.
Of course none of this is any solace to Arsenal fans, who saw their team drop two points at the Hawthorns, or Wenger who served the first game of his ban in the stand as the Gunners went down 4-2 to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup yesterday.
Dean, meanwhile, will likely face no punishment for getting an easy decision that wrong. And so it goes.
So will they now rescind Cech’s yellow card..?
Will they fuck.
Admitting he was wrong just adds salt to the wound……which probably pleases him.
It’s just PR, the PGMOL know they’re under the scanner like never before.
They’re hoping a little mea culpa will stave off actual reform.
Dean can eat sh!t.
Nice idea, but he’d probably manage to get that wrong as well.
Unfortunately shit can’t eat itself!
He could hardly say he didn’t get it wrong! Honest bloke? Yeh as honest as mike Riley!
Two crooks!
Well surely they’ll rescind the touchline ban..
will they fuck.
And give us 2 points
Anything else you’d like to admit to Mike?
All you can do is sit back and laugh as the carnival of football continues. COYG
What. A. Cunt.
N.B. This is not an apology. It has not even come direct from the cheat himself. Rather it is a weasel-worded press release, sneaked out and designed to take some of the heat off Dean while preserving some semblance of respect in the mind of the football public for what is, at best, an outmoded anachronism of an organisation.
This probably won’t be a popular opinion, but – I don’t think we want to set a precedent of refs publicly apologising for (or defending) decisions after a game.
That would just be another bullshit circus for the media that would put more focus on what refs say/do off the pitch. And i certainly don’t want to hear more from Mike Dean. It wouldn’t help the actual game be more fair.
What we need is more competent & consistent refereeing on the day. Although there seems little appetite from those in power to make any real changes.
the game is much faster now. They should have had a ref in each half a long time ago. VAR will obviously help, but the idea that one ref can run up and down the whole pitch seeing every incident clearly has always puzzled me. I know the linesman can chip in with a decision or two, but they are stuck on the sides watching for offsides all game….
But almost all the really bad decisions are not caused by the referees’ being far away; in the three cases I mentioned above (Chambers penalty and Kane and Alli stamps), the referee was well-placed.
These are easy decisions to make and clearly “the mistakes” are deliberate.
I watched a lot of matches in the last Euros, and my recollection is that the officiating was at a very high standard. That doesn’t mean there were no mistakes, there always will be, but none like the Chambers “handball” or, to take a recent non-Arsenal example, the failure to give Kane and Alli red cards against Man City. I understand this was the pick of officials throughout Europe, but there must be a way to get close to this level in the richest league in the world.
There’s no desire for that. They are chosen for the crooks that they are as no one at the FA cares for honest and competent refereeing. They only care to keep these scumbags under their control in order to manipulate the league as they wish.
“ I don’t think we want to set a precedent of refs publicly apologising for (or defending) decisions after a game.”
This is now a thing in the nba: http://official.nba.com/nba-last-two-minute-reports-archive/
The refs don’t like it: https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/85559636
I don’t know if i love it either, but the refs wanting to get rid of it makes me want to keep it.
The controlled media work hand in hand with the FA crooks to manipulate the public opinion. Disgusting! The fans should make their voices heard every game to let the bastards know that they
aren’t fooled by this ongoing charade.
Honestly it turns one away from wanting to watch this beautiful game.
I wish the FA could revisit such incidences. Even if Wenger’s words to Dean cannot be taken back, they relate to a decision that Dean himself has admitted to being wrong about.
Wenger was rightly punished for the way that he went about telling Dean that he was a bald-headed, outrageously flamboyant cockwomble.
What I’d like to see is an investigation into the yellow card issued to Petr Cech for asking Dean what the offence was. I just can’t see how that yellow can be allowed to stand.
It’s so frustrating that we allow the man in the middle to wrongly influence the outcome of games. Yes, we played shit but we’d done just enough to win the game. We were winning when he made that call.
Disagree about Wenger being rightly punished! Of course he’s going to be angry at the bald headed outrageously flamboyant cockwomble and he’s honest enough to say so, unlike that twat dean!
A reminder of the statistical evidence behind the assertion that Dean is a wanker. It doesn’t even out in the end, as the maths shows us. It is bent.
https://www.discoveringstatistics.com/2015/09/28/the-referees-a/
Ah well, better late than never… Oh, oh yeah, no it’s not.
Where are all the experts who said it was definitely a penalty , crawled back up their backsides!!
Just as a point of interest, the commentators on the U.S. broadcast all said it was never a penalty.
If the first VAR game wasn’t this evening then this bulshit wouldn’t have come to light.
Too little, too late
This sounds like the PGMOL trying to smooth things over, now that they have exacted some punishment on Wenger.
Like I mentioned previously: there’s no conspiracy against Arsenal; some refs, however, seem to start from the basis that the Arsenal players are poor defenders, who are more likely guilty of infractions than making good tackles, or victims of trickery. In that split second, this subconscious view can tilt the decision against Arsenal’s favour.
Arsenal are indeed unfortunately bad at defending, but that doesn’t mean they are invariably at fault when something happens in the box.
So we don’t actually know he said that at all, do we.
So when vr comes into play will we see a whole new crop of refs join the game because it will expose how shit the current bunch are doing? I hope so
A case of too little, too late. The ineptitude of English referees is appalling.
Too cold for comfort.
The damage is already done. Such apologies are not worthy receiving. They should have at least meted a lesser punishment to the old man
Much though I dislike Dean for his attitude, 2 points are not going to save this season. This team have no cutting edge and a very weak defence.
Wenger is usually wrong about many things, but his comments on referees are always on point.
In Australia VAR is used to overturn referee decisions but is only used for “obvious refereeing errors”. It’s likely that this decision wouldn’t have been overturned because the ball hit his hand and so it’s not an “obvious” error. Silly, but I’ve seen many of those decisions remain throughout the season.
He admitted he was wrong so that when “insert Tottenham player name here” does the same he can justify not giving the penalty.
Interesting that this statement comes out after Wenger started his touchline ban for questioning a now agreed upon incorrect decision, isn’t it? Pricks.
Awful, awful organisation. 3 game ban, fine, 2 yellow cards, 2 points dropped, out of FA Cup for criticising this error. For this c*nt to come out and admit it. It’s a p*sstake if ever I saw one.
Thank you, you bald headed Highness for your sneaky apology.
I think Mike Dean should now be proclaimed as King Cunt the First.
Someone needs photoshop Mike Dean onto that south park sorry meme.
Mike Dean should just admit that he’s a cunt.
VAR VAR VAR
VAR VAR VARRRRRRRR
VAR VAR VAR
VAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR ETC
Fuck Dean, fuck PGMOL and even fuck VAR. I don’t want “video assisted refs”, I want all stadiums to be fitted with high-frame, 4k Kinects everywhere and run by a Ref A.I. called SkysportsNET that analysis every incident and makes a decision based on complex machine-learning algorithms. Then on August the 29th 2019, SkysportsNET will become self-aware and see Mike Dean as a threat and launch nukes from the US by making that orange-coloured president press his big red button to terminate Mike Dean. SkysportsNET will also consider pundits like Savage a threat and send a Verminator back in time… Read more »
Pretty sure there is a whole load of other decisions he can admit to being wrong about! Not good enough I’m afraid.
Time for all fans to demand change and improvements to the substandard officiating model which allows so many inconsistencies to occur, every matchday.
All sports have progressed by using technology. Meanwhile, we rely on biased and inept officials like Mike Dean to prance about and decide who to hand advantages to when crucial points are on the line – with no consequences to their poor performances.
Can we have the 2 points back then????
And what about asking Bobby Madeley if he should have given a penalty when Rodriguez was fouled at the Emirates earlier this season just to balance things up
Fair and Football aren’t two words used in the same sentence at the FA and Referee’s Association otherwise we would see some sort of organisational change.
It doesn’t have to be about technology, so they can stop trying to blame being sub standard in your profession on technology!
The only two things I’d like to hear come from Mike Riley is that Mike Dean will never again be given an Arsenal game in any competition and that I am resigning with immediate effect.
Notice how all the traditional media outlets are trying to start another furore against Wenger and making stories which deflect from the fact that we have an issue with sub standard refereeing being acceptable. The BBC wrote a general article about the incidents but didn’t dare to analyse the hard data trends behind some of our worst referees. Until someone steps up and takes responsibility then nothing will change. #FA Personally I think we should have some exchange of top level english speaking referees from other countries for a short period, so we can at least shame our organisation into… Read more »
No wonder no English referee will be at the world up
Dean Cunt
Dean should be put on administrative leave for the rest of the campaign and then asked to retire. This is his arrogance and his hubris getting in the way (again) oft him being able to be impartial as match offolicial.
Dean needs to learn that no one comes to a football match to see a referee turned performance artist.
Dean is not a good referee. Stop me, people, if I’m going too fast.
The absolute total utter cant.
Riley is using the introduction of VAR as a smokescreen to cover up the enormous elephant in the room. “I know Mike would’ve overturned it if he had the VAR”. I’m sorry but if someone needs VAR to get that decision correct, they should not be refereeing at any professional level, let alone the elite in the premier league. Let’s not try and make this out to be a difficult, contentious decision and that he couldn’t possibly be expected to get that right first time without VAR. It was an awful, awful decision. If somebody calls that as a penalty,… Read more »
There was never a question of anything, no one else thought it was a pen. Dean wanted to see a handball so he called it that way
I honestly believe there needs to be some sort of official recourse, whether it’s financial or otherwise, that would let clubs bring charges against referees or the refereeing body (PGMOL in this case) when “errors of an egregious nature” cost them points.
Give us the points then.
Wenger did himself a disservice and the club.
He should have press Dean but the industrial language has heaped pressure on our subsequent matches.
More importantly it incorrectly deflected pressure away from the team. Instead of tightening up and concentrating, we feel hard done and continue to remain ill discipline conceding silly (admittedly soft) fouls in the box.
He needs to hold the entire team defensively significantly to greater accountability and they need to feel the pressure that if they are not up to scratch, we replace with ready made from market.