So now that the dust has settled after last nights epic battle and the dippers have gone home whining and complaining as usual, it was blatantly obvious that either Michael Oliver and his two linesman were either totally blind or failed to see many of the antics going on in last nights game; penalties missed, handballs not called and being completely unbiased here, an unfortunate misplaced step by Costa which will now in all likelihood result in a 3 game ban, well if he is stupid enough to do the 'crime' then he has to do the time; and I am sure if Oliver had seen it Costa would have been taking an early shower.

 

Most of the missed calls throughout the season are due to the refs not being able to keep up with the game or being on the wrong side of the action.  Linesman are generally too far away if an incident takes place towards the centre of the pitch, especially in a fast paced game like last night, so when I looked around at some other major sports there is generally more than one official on the 'field' of play during the game; here are a few examples of well known sports:

 

Ice Hockey = 2 refs + 2 Linesman 

NBA = Crew Chief + 2 refs

NFL = 1 X ref + 6 Linesman

Cricket = 2 x Umpires

Baseball = 4 Umpires (6 for the playoffs)

 

In addition to the number of officials all have video replay capability although that's a topic for another day.  

 

So my question is: ' Is it time to have 2 referees in for our 'beautiful game' rather than the likes of Phil Dowd huffing and puffing to trying to keep up with the players?   

 

Your thoughts

 

 

Yes, if there were enough decent ones. The problem isn't just a question of fitness though some of the decisions made are just plain bad decisions. What we don't want is to have two refs that are currently deemed not good enough for the PL reffing a PL game between them. A lot of investment needs to go into referreeing right from the lowest level of the game to help develop better refs throughout.

One other point, when the top band of refs went professional it was largely to allow them to spend more time on fitness and the like, are they fit enough?

As barn said, we will just end up with 2 feckless refs at the moment.

I agree with what you guys are saying, even in the sports I listed there are still bad calls and incidents missed, unfortunately while we have the human element present on decision making one refs interpretation of an incident will always be slightly different than another;  if you take the human element out of the equation your only option would be video cams overseeing the game and a computer deciding what is a fair tackle and what deserves a yellow and the game would be stop and start as free kicks will be given all over the place due to the fact that the computer will make decisions based entirely on the rule book.  But getting back to reality, by having two sets of eyes at least important decisions such as blatant handballs and miss timed tackles in the box would not go unpunished....we hope. 

I think it's a good idea. Would there be two refs following play in all areas of the pitch? If so, it could work like Cricket where, for difficult decisions, the umpires will consult one another.

My concern with refs at present is how some seem not to handle pressure applied by players and the crowd. Yellow cards need handing out for verbal dissent imo as the sight of a group of players abusing a ref after a decision is not good.