Tony Pulis, the Stoke manager, feels that every club should have a vote at the end of the season on referees, with the three worst refs being relegated and the three best Championship refs being promoted. Poor old Tony has seen some horrendous decisions given against his side in the last few weeks. One at the weekend really stands out though. Lee Cattermole decided to stop a goal-bound header from going in with his hand, only for the ref, Martin Atkinson, to give a corner. Obviously Cattermole should have been sent off and a penalty given to Stoke (who went on to lose 2-0) but to infuriate Stoke further, they went on to lose Ryan Shawcross to 2 bookings. Pulis has a right to be angry. The decisions have been disgraceful (Gary Neville escaping a red card 2 weeks ago!) and they have certainly cost his side valuable points.
However, relegating refs? I'm sure the likes of Roy Keane and Billy Davies would be delighted at the blundering refs getting sent to their division. That could absolutely never work. I do think that they should be punished. Dropping them for a few weeks maybe. The problem is that refs can argue that the game is so fast that of course they are going to make mistakes. The introduction of extra officials has worked slightly in the Europa League. But the solution in my opinion is video replays. Instead of sitting third from bottom, Stoke would be in the relative comfort of 11th with this technology causing a 30 second delay of the game at most (it takes that for the players to moan at the ref about his decision). It's time to start moving the game forward so that we're not talking about poor refereeing decisions every Monday morning. Video technology is used in almost every other sport. It's time for football to catch up.
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