Calling for him to be removed may seem a bit childish, but it's not unheard of, and it's actually happened in the past when clubs have complained about a refs performance. Liverpool do it now and again and United under Ferguson did it all of the time.
This wouldn't just be a knee jerk reaction either, we are talking about years worth of mistakes that has cost us points and trophies. Arsenal won 2 fa cup finals against us on the back of him getting calls badly wrong, the Sanchez clear handball that led to their goal and Kovacic getting sent off for having his own foot stood on.
Then you have the Premier League game against Man United in 2020. Willian was booked for diving, when he was clearly caught by a trailing leg. Isn't it odd that a ref decides to book Willian in this situation when they haven't been booking players for diving for years now? In the same game, Maguire clearly kicks Batshuayi in the balls, everybody knew what he did, but no red card. A goal was ruled out in the same game after Azpilicueta was punished for pushing a Man United player in the lead up to the goal.......ignoring the part where Fred is the one that actually pushed Azpilicueta into the Man United player.
There was also the Tottenham game where he was made to look like an absolute clown for booking Alonso after Gazzaniga flew at him after missing the ball. VAR had to get involved and they didn't even tell him to look at the monitor because it was so obvious what happened. How can he be the only person that didn't see it?
Against Liverpool, he was awful throughout. Liverpool were playing tactical fouls all day, especially Fabinho, and not one of their players were booked. It's like the new rules on refs being more lenient gave Taylor an excuse to screw us over once more. Then you had Salah booting the ball away which should have been an automatic yellow, Taylor ignored that though but was more than happy to give Mendy a yellow for the same thing. He also ignored the many over the top complaints from Liverpool players every time a decision didn't go their way, but as soon as our players complained, he would book them.
The VAR incident was handled terribly. Whether you think it was a handball and red card or not, one thing we can surely agree on is how badly Taylor reviewed the situation. He didn't even look at the video, he looks at a still image from a distance and gives the penalty. It pretty much confirms that he had already made his mind up. Personally, I thought the penalty was fair enough, but if Taylor had actually looked at it properly without bias, he would have seen that the goal had already been denied with James blocking the shot with his leg, the part with his arm came milliseconds after James had already stopped the ball from going into the net with his leg. If Taylor had actually bothered to watch a video instead of just looking at a still image from a distance, he would have seen this and maybe he could have had a proper idea of what happened in that situation.
I won't sign the petition because it's stupid. Even if it was a serious petition, I still wouldnt sign it because they never work, but I do think the club should speak up about this. I think we have every right to voice our complaints about this and even be suspicious of Taylor's officiating. I have always hated that fans, pundits and the media laugh at others for questioning whether certain refs are legit or not. In a sport full of corruption and cheating, why is it so hard to believe that there may be a few bent refs in the game? Clattenburg admitted to it a few years back and Mark Halsey came out and said he was told to lie and say he didn't see certain incidents. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that there are dodgy refs in the game, and it shouldn't be laughed off as fans being bitter because a few decisions didn't go their way.
(The CIs are 95% binomial confidence intervals that account for sample size, hence the low precision)
