Coote, Oliver, Reffing Shitshows and Effing Shitshows

Free read on the state of officiating in the Premier League

One day I’ll go to bed at 11pm without David Coote.

Sorry, I mean one day I’ll go to bed at 11pm without David Coote appearing in a newsflash with a latest bombshell, just as I’m trying to stop my brain from whirring and settle down to sleep.

Whenever I’m off this stuff, something happens, and I’m back on the reffing shitshow. At least this time I’m not studying new data, but will refer back to the article linked below (which isn’t a podcast but is forever trapped in the Substack podcast template 🤦‍♂️):

Unpacking Why Liverpool Are Treated Terribly by Refs/VARs On Almost Every Metric

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Note: the above article includes various video clips that make up a disturbing pattern.

It’s brave of David Coote to come out as gay (fair play), albeit it does not excuse his behaviour, nor should it exempt him from a proper retrospective analysis of his career.

Indeed, it, along with his admitting to being drunk and saying vile things, and also to doing cocaine, make it even more imperative that his career is examined, to see if these things left him open to further illegal behaviour (beyond the coke), and if it left him open to coercion or even blackmail.

Football is worth billions; people with billions influence football. Also, a cocaine habit is not cheap. Anyone who feels they have to keep secrets to keep their job is vulnerable.

Top-level football scouting uses eye-test (anecdotal evidence) and data. Elite policing – not the old shitty kind – uses video evidence and data analysis.

“Imagine if a few months ago someone suggested to you that David Coote had an agenda against Liverpool. The logical response would have been to laugh it off and say something like, ‘Come on, he doesn’t hate Liverpool,” writes Charlie Ecclestone in the Athletic, before setting up the punchline.

Except, based on data and the eye test, that’s exactly what I said. (I expect I got laughed at by the ‘neutrals’.)

“The logical response would have been to laugh it off and say something like, ‘Come on, he doesn’t hate Liverpool. What, do you think in his spare time he’s calling them s*** and saying that Jurgen Klopp’s a German c***!?’”

He’d already written that:

“But is it also possible that referees have unconscious biases that might, for whatever reason, make them less favourable to Arsenal? Absolutely. They are humans, after all. It’s tempting to run away from this possibility for fear of being labelled someone who buys into crackpot theories — but it’s more deluded to imagine that referees are somehow unlike every other member of the population and immune from the biases and prejudices that affect everyone.”

Again, which is what I’ve been saying for 5-10 years, with constant analysis, and various big data studies.

“You cannot simply draw a straight line to Coote being biased against Liverpool or claim that he’s representative of how referees think, but it is not a stretch to suggest that, in private, some referees have strong views about individuals. Consciously or otherwise, those opinions might bleed into how they officiate, especially given how vilified they are.”

This is true, but also, what about refs who come into it already hating a club or its manager?

"You cannot simply draw a straight line to Coote being biased against Liverpool...”

And this is where my issues are, because we have 5-7 very strange decisions which we could use like CCTV evidence, and a load of data anomalies, in just 13 games as a VAR and three as a ref.

This is why I’ve wanted Coote investigated, and his coming out as gay, or having been sacked, should not alter that.

His record needs revisiting in forensic detail, in the manner I’ve done in the past; there are just too many outliers in just 16 games (13 as VAR, three as ref) involving the club.

That the two biggest VAR controversies happened days after he was recorded drunk (he admits to not being sober) calling Jürgen Klopp a “German cunt”, and talking full of spite for the Liverpool manager, is more than a little coincidental.

Coincidences happen.

Circumstantial evidence, however, is the racking up of coincidences: unlikely events, one after another, whose odds of mere chance exponentially multiply when placed in a row.

Then, no mention in the media, despite it being on his LinkedIn and on various news items from the Manchester FA website a decade ago, of his time from 2013-2016 at the Manchester FA, situated at the City campus (pre official City Campus); and there was talk of a 2017 investigation relating to behaviour at a local FA, but that nothing came of it.

Would that, whatever it might be, be worth revisiting in light of his subsequent actions? Maybe it was nothing, but new evidence can cast old actions in a new light.

And what about the spot-fixing accusations?

Coote’s first Liverpool game as a ref was before what I call ‘Cuntgate’ (also the name of the little wooden door at the top of my garden), and he failed to give Liverpool a blatant penalty at the empty Kop end.

Andy Robertson, who was taken out in the box, called him ‘fucking useless’. Okay, that’s harsh, but that’s football. If you’re a ref, you can expect that.

Already by then had come a load of subjective VAR decisions for Manchester clubs, and various ones either against Liverpool, or later, where he ignored the situation (Martin Ødegaard handball, which everyone said should have been a penalty). He gave just Liverpool two overturns as a VAR to the Reds, one for a clear handball, the other in a meaningless end-of-season game, perhaps as a token gesture.

Then, his second-ever Liverpool game as a ref was when Liverpool were top of the league last season going into the run-in, and he gave a Foul Balance of -14 against the Reds and thus +14 to Brighton, which was then the biggest in the Premier League for a home team since the data I have going back to 2019, or 2,000 games.

A 2,000-in-one Foul Balance event, in game two.

Third game, and it’s the “unbelievable” and other adjectives used to describe how he twice waved “play on” when Mo Salah is grabbed, pulled and bundled over by Leon Bailly.

Ex-refs and pundits could scarcely believe it, but it goes down as just another (after another, and another, and another) ‘honest mistake’.

At what point is it fair to call something a dishonest mistake? Or at the very least, a vested-interest mistake, in that he hated Klopp with a passion.

Again, many of these fit into the pattern where Liverpool don’t get VAR overturns or opposition red cards before almost 30 minutes (6-10 years), or penalties before 15 minutes (12 years). That, and some more that follows, is outlined in detail in the article linked to.

(Liverpool also get the worst Foul Balances in games, albeit nowhere near what Coote handed out, and it got worse when Klopp fell out with John Brooks; within a few months, four Liverpool players had been sent off, including by Brooks.)

It also fits a pattern where ‘rookie’ refs as far as Liverpool are concerned have terrible records at Anfield in terms of the data (first 5-10 games), in that they don’t give clear Big Decisions to Liverpool in the way they do to rival clubs at their home grounds.

New refs appear to be trained to treat the Kop shouting for a penalty as a bunch of liars, trying to con them, when Mo Salah is strangled in the box.

So when Anfield debutant Michael Salisbury gives Julio Enciso just a yellow card, it fits the pattern of various other newbie refs bottling Big Decisions at Anfield; and especially making weird calls at the Kop end.

Coote and the Robertson non-penalty; then Coote and the bizarre Salah non-DOGSO; Thomas Bramall erroneously sending off Alexis Mac Allister at the Kop end, later overturned; John Brooks not sending off Tyrone Mings for karate-kicking Cody Gakpo in the chest; Tony Harrington erroneously sending off Andy Robertson at the Kop end for a clear foul that was not, however, a DOGSO by the laws of the game; Tony Harrington not giving the penalty at the Kop end when Joe Gomez gets booted up in the air; and more generally, Darren Bond recently doing his first Anfield game, and going almost full Coote on Foul Balance, at -12 against Liverpool, which is a one-in-600 occurrence for a home team; all new refs, often with Paul Tierney or Stuart Attwell as the VAR.

Plus for weirdness, linesman Constantine Hatzidakis elbowing Andy Robertson.

And that Paul Tierney (Hatzidakis is his long-time lino), as the VAR, has only given subjective calls against Liverpool (three, all for Manchester clubs), and indeed, missed the ludicrous debut ref’s red card for Alexis Mac Allister as well.

Refs are being sent to Anfield with totally scrambled brains, and, it seems, clear instructions to avoid the calls of 60,000 people, even if the 60,000 happen to be right; maybe especially if they are right.

(Again, Peter Walton said they are trained to deal with 60,000 crowds and not bow to the pressure, and has spoken about how it’s important to be even more determined, so if a club is nice to you, he said, be less nice to them in return. It’s all very confusing.)

It fits the pattern of Tierney and Attwell in c.60 games as the VAR for Liverpool matches (almost a third of all games) – and the pair as VARs and/or refs have done over 40% of Liverpool’s Premier League games since 2019 – giving zero meaningful subjective decisions as VARs.

(Tierney no subjective overturns for, three against; Attwell two for, but once when 5-0 up, and once when 4-0 down in the 92nd minute, and both were obvious.)

Just as Lucas Bergvall’s non second-yellow in both the league game (which baffled Gary Neville) and then the cup game at Spurs (which baffled everyone) fits the pattern: where no opposition player has had two yellow cards against Liverpool since 2016, apart from a couple of months in 2023. I’m no longer keeping track of the data, but I know that nothing has changed.

But that said, Coote was happy to rule out a late Liverpool winner at Everton due to a dodgy offside decision (the lines were wonky and not set for a margin of error in 2020), days after calling Klopp a cunt while his mate said everyone hates Scousers.

If you can’t draw a line between what’s said on the eve of a game and then some very dodgy decisions, then ... why not?

That Coote, when VARring just c.5% of their games, gave Manchester clubs nearly a quarter of all their subjective VAR overturns to date (23%, as of their tallies a few weeks ago), and that his first subjective overturns in 2019 all went to Manchester clubs, makes me suspicious of someone with strong (but not public) Manchester connections.

I’d at least be asking questions, as I would with all this.

I worry that someone living a lie as first a gay man (who would indeed, sadly, get additional abuse from fans, as some football fans are gobshites), but then a gay man doing cocaine and sending videos of it to friends while on duty at a tournament, and then a gay man being a nasty piece of work in a pub, should not be excused because, as noted, he is a gay man.

He may be playing this as a PR trick, on the back of the Michael Oliver abuse, and using the gay-card (which I hear is handed to people who like musical theatre. That said, so do I, but I never got one).

Then there was talk of spot-fixing. That was denied at the time, but not much has been heard since.

Alarmingly, just seemed very rife for blackmail, if he was trying to keep a lot of secrets. (Not that being gay is wrong, but clearly he wanted it kept secret, and understandably so.)

It also seems like he wasn’t suited to refereeing in general. How did the PGMOL allow all this to happen? Are they vetting their refs?

True equality is that every identity category is human and flawed, and while the pressure he was under is understandable, I still don’t get a sense that his decisions in Liverpool games were objectively fair.

The LGBT people in my life are lovely and very dear to me, but John Wayne Gacy, as a deliberately extreme example, wasn’t so nice, nor was Jeffrey Dahmer. Being gay is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, if that’s how he’s intending it.

Any minority group should not be bestowed sainthood. In this day and age, we should all be comfortable with people’s sexualities varying from our own, but I do understand how that would be difficult as a Premier League ref.

In that sense, Coote has my sympathy, but it still doesn’t excuse his behaviour.

“You cannot simply draw a straight line to Coote being biased against Liverpool”

Except, I think you can indeed plot the evidence on a board and run pieces of red string from Coote to all the evidence, and draw quite a few straight lines. (Coote likes a line, and indeed, in another life, may have been better suited to being a linesman.)

Sniping aside, if Coote is getting his life back on track, good for him.

No one deserves to be cast out of society (beyond murderous raping psychopaths), and he will find other work, with his age and qualifications; albeit maybe not in a position of trust again.

But I also found his ‘apology’, as read via the BBC’s excerpts, a bit generic and self-serving, with lots of disassociating himself from his actions, rather than owning them. He was not sober. He was under stress. He is a gay man. It’s a tough job. He didn’t recognise himself.

But being highly critical of referees – who are paid up to £200,000 a year and more in the past with gigs in the oil states – should not lead to abuse. Equally, online abuse, while it may lead to actual abuse, is 99% hot air.

I mildly criticised Notts Forest fans after the cup tie three years ago, and received death threats, one in the form of a poem celebrating the day I die.

I deleted my Twitter/X account months ago, as it is more likely to bring nastiness into my life as it is to provide any use; no one wants every third burger they eat to be a turd burger, or they’d stop going to that restaurant. If every third time you went for a swim, someone had shat in the pool, you’d take up another hobby.

The minds of so many heavy X users have been warped beyond all recognition, and online death threats are often sad teenage kids or emotionally stunted people with no lives.

That said, they can still be unpleasant; my first ones came from fellow Liverpool fans 20 years ago, when I got the gig as the weekly columnist on the official Liverpool FC website (albeit I was never directly employed by the club). Friends would helpfully send me links to what people were saying, before I asked to stop doing so.

It taught me not to read what people were saying about me, as it included that I was dying of AIDS, that I had never been to Anfield (someone on that forum who sat in front of me for years was able to correct them), and some pretty horrific stuff I won’t go into.

It’s why I also think that when I read big headline stories that one or two people have sent very nasty abuse to players, I don’t see it as a story, because one or two people are always sending nasty abuse to one or two other people. There are millions of seriously mentally ill people using social media every day; plus, millions of arseholes. If footballers read this stuff, it’s almost a case of ‘more fool them’, even if the offence is committed by the trolls.

But I imagine it’s obviously pretty bad for refs online; I remember a decade ago, Chris Hoy the cyclist getting the abuse for Chris Foy the ref, just as illiterate online hate mobs went after paediatricians.

Yet that’s another factor: the amount of fury I see online (usually under the line of an article these days, as I don’t use social media, but what I also used to see on Twitter) when Liverpool get a justified penalty is insane.

I don’t think Mo Salah has ever been given a penalty any ‘neutral’ was happy about.

I often hear that he was “looking for it” when simply running as fast as he can towards goal; which is like saying a woman is “asking for it”, when out for the night.

We heard it recently when he was brought down at Notts Forest. He ran directly at the Forest goal, and was totally sandwiched, which in itself is usually a foul.

Elliot Anderson tried to win the ball, and instead his thigh took out Salah’s thigh by cutting across his path, chopping him down, while both he and Neco Williams have their hands on Salah’s chest. Williams is also kicking the back of Salah’s calf. (Williams, in black gloves, has one nipple and Anderson has the other.) Good luck to anyone running at speed, staying on their feet, being tripped, pulled one way and pulled the other, whilst kicked from behind.

Y’know, just another big moment waved away.

(And if it’s a Liverpool-connected co-commentator he will often say it’s not a penalty as he has a job to keep, and a need to look totally unbiased.)

What Salah is looking for here is an official prepared to do his job; and ditto the VAR. But it’s a Forest, and they kick up a stink about these things, despite having got more foul penalties in the Premier League via VAR than Liverpool, and they only got promoted in 2022. (They may indeed have valid gripes about VAR as well.)

Plus, people don’t discuss how 95% of fans hate Liverpool, just as 95% of fans hate Man United. People also seem to hate Scousers in a way that they don’t hate Geordies or Mackems or Brummies.

There are few true neutrals.

In this day and age, governments and powerful people have risen, and many fallen, due to social media mobs.

The online mobs changed real life. People in all walks of life stopped doing their jobs properly, and just tried to appease the virtual pichforkers. No one wanted their life ruined by the hate mobs. Everyone acquiesced and took the path of least resistance, with the corruption of the ‘sorry, I didn’t see that’.

Refs are no longer under pressure just at games from fans, but from the watching world, and the billion keyboard warriors out there, who don’t use data to assess things but the raw instantaneous emotion that makes all of us wrong, often, in the heat of fury; in that an injustice may or may not be part of a trend.

(Which is why I’ve spent half a dozen years looking at trends, not just incidents, which have helped me to figure out who is a good ref and who isn’t.)

It’s ironic timing, given that Liverpool had a clear red-card high and dangerous tackle on Wataru Endo (new ref, yellow card only; Tierney as VAR, no overturn, both of which I could have made money betting on, if betting markets exist), when this was unearthed:

High Boot Fouls

https://www.premierleague.com/news/4079982

From this, you’d say that, at the very least, it’s a clear definition of a foul on Mac Allister, and thus a penalty; and whether it’s a yellow card or a red card can be debated. (Yellow seemed normal, unlike the Endo one, due to the force involved.)

Except despite the Premier League’s own rules, it wasn’t given as a foul.

It cost Liverpool a chance of the title. That’s all. (Coote came in next game, at home to Brighton, to try and finish the job.)

Ref: “No. Not for me, mate.”

Michael Oliver says “not for me”, running away, having not been able to see through the backs of players unless the PMGOL now hand out x-ray vision contact lenses.

He may as well be saying “please no, please no!”, as someone given abuse by Man City fans for years, and who knows that this could be the title on the line. It calls for some cognitive dissonance. Luckily for Ollie, Stuart Attwell is on hand.

Attwell, whose litany of major gaffes can be seen in video form in my previously linked article, is the VAR.

“They both come in high”, Attwell says; yet if that was viewed as CCTV in a court of law, the KC would point out that this is hallucinatory, and the jury would see that, actually, only one person came in high. The judge would ask Attwell if he is high.

“He’s definitely touched it. Mac Allister’s then coming into his space. Mac Allister turns his back into him, it’s a coming together. Ollie [Michael Oliver, the ref] confirm on-field decision of play on. Check is complete, check is complete”

Good process, lads. It’s a coming together.

(Next time I drive into the back of another car because I wasn’t looking, I’ll say “it was just a coming together”).

Mac Allister was also not coming into Doku’s space, unless Doku owns the penalty area at Anfield?

Sky’s Peter Smith argued:

“…that the outcome contradicts previous guidance and fails to acknowledge Mac Allister’s feet being on the ground.”

“It’s extremely unsatisfactory for Liverpool fans looking at that explanation. Two things for me: they say that Doku gets the ball, but on those super slo-mos you can see that Mac Allister gets there first.

“The other thing is [when the VAR says] they both come in high. Well Doku has his boot up here and Mac Allister is trying to chest the ball, his feet have barely left the ground, if at all.”

Indeed, chesting the ball is not coming in high; your chest tends to hover about 4-5 feet above the ground. Your boot does not.

I also have some sympathy also for Michael Oliver over the Myles Lewis-Skelly red card, which was probably just about the correct decision, but also – and this is where Arsenal fans may be right to feel aggrieved – it’s one that’s (sadly) rarely given.

That’s the issue with refs: most of the time they don’t do their job, including with second yellow cards.

As noted on the Second Captains’ podcast, Damien Delaney was adamant during the half-time analysis on Irish TV that Lewis-Skelly’s challenge warranted a red card:

“I think it crosses the threshold for what’s required for a red card. He’s trying to stop a counter attack and there’s many ways you can do that, you can ankle tap, you can grab his jersey but for some reason he goes high and he goes studs showing and he goes with force.

“His top 4 studs catch Mat Doherty, his ankle is planted and the angles are right that’s a seriously dangerous tackle. The intent was there, it’s deliberate, the ball is there he’s just gotten it completely wrong and I think the ref has gotten that correct.”

I’d already written on TTT before seeing the incident but having heard about it that it sounded like the type of foul I’ve long argued we should see red cards given for: stopping an attack or just stopping an opponent by playing the opponent, not the ball, especially if with studs.

I first noticed this with Hamza Choudhury about five years ago when he took Mo Salah out with a bad tackle to stop a break, that injured Salah in the process. He only got a yellow, yet it was dangerous and intentional, as well as a tactical foul. You shouldn’t get the same punishment for a jersey pull as for a kick to the shin/ankle.

We saw it earlier this season, with Andreas Pereira stopping Ryan Gravenberch getting away from him with a deliberate rake on his achilles. He got a yellow, but ex-refs said it should have been a red, and along with a litany of awful decisions in that game, Liverpool dropped two points.

If you are deliberately stopping an opponent, it needs to be ‘gentle’. A tactical foul. If that’s then a deliberate and dangerous foul that would only be a yellow if merely a genuine late attempt to get the ball, red seems the correct outcome, due to the addition of intent.

But again, it’s not often given, as refs seem to be under orders to keep the game entertaining, don’t reduce the numbers (but it’s okay if players go off via a stretcher).

Often, Oliver gives things. A lot of refs don’t. A lot of refs bottle things.

But then Oliver, hounded by City fans for years from the decisions he gave to Liverpool in clashes with City (and the ones he didn’t give to City), didn’t dare give the clearest penalty you’ll see, with Doku on Mac Allister.

Maybe it didn’t help that he’d already given on when Ederson totally took out Darwin Núñez, another stonewaller. Two in one game? No chance. The second in the last minute? At Anfield? No chance.

In this video below, Manchester United fan Mark Goldbridge makes some valid points about Oliver over the last 18 months, amongst some other things, such as why some decisions are fixated over, and others just brushed under the carpet.

Goldbridge can be excessive in his criticisms in the bombastic YouTube clickbait manner (that seems to be necessary to get any traction on YouTube), but then, I’ve left some metaphorical studs showing a few times.

However, any excess and hyperbole (which means I find it hard to spend long on YouTube in general, especially the way content is fed to you, and how badly it understands me) doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge problem he’s correctly addressing, particularly in how some decisions just get brushed under the carpet. He speaks of how there’s a narrative around certain incidents, and commentators stick to it; and how some clubs get away with more.

Also, he has correctly spoken in the past about the sinister way Sky didn’t show the Darren England cockup at Spurs last season, ruling out Luis Díaz’s yards-onside goal: the best bit of television, surely! – but instead they didn’t even show it. That’s when I lost trust in the broadcasters to do an honest job.

That was pivotal.

That, along with the post-hoc, post-reality rationalisations and cognitive dissonances of Mike Dean and Peter Walton to fudge and fluster has only added to the sense of gaslighting.

Getting back to that Athletic piece:

“We do not need to hear any more from referees. The opposite is true.

What do you get from hearing Webb explain decisions on his programme? Does Mike Dean piping up during commentary on Super Sunday and saying one thing, then changing his mind once the VAR has overruled the decision, give you confidence in the decision-making process? Do Peter Walton’s insights increase your trust in match officials?

Why does a sport that is so universally popular think, ‘Do you know who we need to hear more from and give more power to? Not the players or managers, but the officials’? Why is this happening? Who asked to hear from Dean on Super Sunday?

In a pre-VAR world, Oliver’s call on Saturday would have been maddening for Arsenal fans but ultimately explicable in the sense it was a bad call made under a lot of pressure in a split second. We’re far beyond that now.”

Indeed. The very existence of VAR has felt like an entire gaslighting project, as before you could at least say that the referee didn’t see it properly, as mad as you might get.

Now, they spend five minutes looking at some goals and incidents, and five seconds looking at others.

This season they have “ref’s call”, when the entire point of having different angles is to see what no human can see in the moment.

Except, ref’s call – aka “ref’s fudge” – is yet one more subjective layer, so instead of working towards the correct decision, they’re working towards the convenient decision. Sometimes it’s invoked; other times not.

Clubs have no say in what gets checked and what gets ignored.

(In the away game at Spurs in the cup, and against Ipswich late on, Paul Tierney cleared what should have been a Liverpool penalty, and then a foul on Endo for the Ipswich goal, aside from not having Enciso sent off. The aforementioned sandwiching of Salah at Forest wasn’t properly checked, and yet sometimes you’d get a five-minute stoppage as they look for something. Again, that’s maddening.)

You’re then left beyond furious, because people are choosing not to see something, rather than doing their job. “They both came in high” is as accurate as saying JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald fired at each other on the Dealey Plaza in 1963. Except there’s hi-def video of this, from 18 different angles.

An issue with Oliver is that his beloved Newcastle, whose shirt he wears when he goes to games, became rivals at the top of the tree.

Then, he has been hounded by City fans, as mentioned, and that has appeared to have changed him. To the point now where some people think he is a City fan.

Next, the insanity of the PGMOL sending him and others to the countries that essentially own Newcastle and Man City, to earn fortunes refereeing games and presumably staying in plush hotels and receiving all kinds of ‘soft bribery’ (albeit maybe this is what Walton meant when he said he’d be less generous to clubs who were nice to him: being buttered-up, and we’d all like to be buttered-up in a plush hotel room in Dubai, I imagined).

How the PGMOL selects refs and VARs for games is also totally opaque. Anyone who has ever visited Liverpool John Lennon Airport seems disqualified from doing Liverpool games. Anyone from any part of Manchester is all fine and dandy for United and City.

And while these refs (as shown by my data) can actually be ‘generous’ to rival clubs in rival cities, they are harsher to the same clubs in away games, and extra harsh as VARs, in their safe cubicle at Stockley Park. (This was more pronounced when VARs were more anonymous; see Coote going Manchester-crazy early on, and Tierney too. There’s a bit more accountability now, but we still mostly hear justifications, not rational analysis.)

Michael Salisbury, who did not send off Enciso, had been reported as unable to do Liverpool or Everton games; yet has now done both. So he can’t support either.

(Bergvall should have been sent off; scored a minute later, Liverpool lost. Pereira should have been sent off; scored a minute later, which led to the chain of events where Liverpool dropped two points. Enciso should have been sent off, gets an assist minutes later, that could be yet costly in terms of goal difference – Liverpool conceding one, and also, not having 10-15 minutes to play against 10 men.)

He’s from South Ribble, Lancashire. Matt Donohue is another new ref, from Manchester. I wrote a couple of years ago that all the refs seem to be from the northwest and Yorkshire. Not much has changed. Darren Bond is another from Lancashire who at the grand old age of 87 (at least that’s how old he looks), did his first Liverpool game (badly) this season. We’ve also got rotund 56-year-old linesmen, and some active refs in recent years have been of a similar age.

Three refs can’t do Liverpool because of Liverpool connections, but no refs seem to be stopped from doing other clubs, bar Oliver and Newcastle. Interestingly, Chris Kavanagh doesn’t do Man City very much, and Stuart Attwell hasn’t VARred them in over two years, since they lost the Manchester derby.

Also, where are all the refs from London and the south?

I also agree with the PMGOL in wanting refs and VARs to work in teams, albeit I prefer the idea of VARs being separate, which was what I’d assumed when first thinking VAR would be a good idea. There should be no mateyness whatsoever. But if they do work in teams, they can trust each other. The flip-side is that they can also fudge for each other.

What I don’t get is pairing refs and VARs with teams: again, 40% of Liverpool’s Premier League games since 2019 have involved either Tierney or Attwell, or occasionally, both. FORTY PERCENT! It’s been one or other, or both, in over 90 games since 2019.

Finally on Coote, anyone abusing him for his sexuality is an absolute piece of shit. But Coote’s sexuality should have nothing to do with how his officiating of Liverpool games is judged, nor his own absolutely shitty behaviour. It’s also not nice to call someone a German cunt, after all. (A genuine apology to Liverpool supporters and Klopp wouldn’t go amiss, not to the vague cliché of “everyone I’ve hurt”.)

I’d like not to have to think about Coote again, but I also don’t want his conduct swept under the rug. (I expect he’ll get a job in the media soon.)

But ultimately, there are no neutrals.

No one cares; it’s just Liverpool, losing the league in 2021/22 to a handball that Tierney and Chris Kavanagh conveniently didn’t see at Everton (who got the apology), and in 2023/24, being derailed by Oliver and Attwell and both coming in high, and Coote as the VAR in the Arsenal game at Anfield.

And Attwell and Tierney not seeing one bad offence after another.

Then, back to the no subjective VAR overturn for Liverpool before the 27th minute, but several against. No penalty for Liverpool before the 15th minute in 12 years, bar the empty-stadium season (which again, says a lot). No second yellows for any opponent in eight of the last nine years. The lack of foul interventions via VAR, with just two foul Liverpool penalties given for fouls by VAR in six years – when Coote alone gave each Manchester club two apiece. The Foul Balances that make no sense, and get worse when Liverpool play better, and also when their manager has upset the refs. The 90+ Liverpool games Tierney and Attwell have done in six years. All the stuff discussed in recent pieces.

It’s all very funny, if you’re not a Liverpool fan.

But the Premier League? It continues to slowly eat itself and erode trust, via its amateurism on various levels, while the players and managers remain elite.

The Premier League and its broadcast partners care about the ‘product’, about the entertainment, but sport should not be fixed to make it more fun for the ‘neutral’. The further down that road they go, the more we might as well all be playing PlayStation and watching WWE.

All I hope is that Liverpool can withstand the PGMOL and win the league, but I guess Arsenal fans are thinking the same.

I’ve archived my refereeing and VARring databases, but the problem obviously hasn’t gone away. But tonight, hopefully I can go to bed without David Coote.