And so a whole new season of cheating gets underway

I think the fact that a lot of aspects of officiating are so chaotic or illogical in football exacerbates the situation with on-field behaviour.

 

Wonder if that’s always been the case with the standard of Officiating or if it’s a combination of higher profile and lack of respect from the players towards the officials?

 

As you say, it's quite likely to be a variety of factors at play.

 

Change it up a bit, if you are booked for an obvious 'Cheating' event if that's the best description, introduction of a new FA wide Fair Play Fine. Upto 50% of a players weekly wage packet. Over say 5 offences in a season also results in a 5 match ban for the following season.

Funnel those fines directly into grass roots football / youth development.

Hit em in the pocket, they soon get the message.

 

Brereton-Diaz should be facing a disrepute charge and should have been booked at the very least. He could not have complained had he been sent off. The initial push was worth a yellow.

 

He did get a yellow 4 the foul. But should be banned for 8 games for the fake dive . Ref and var were shocking

 

It’s a game played by loads of chubby men, cuddling each other on the floor

Rugby League is better, imo.

But as a previous comment eluded to. Rugby has good officiating practices in place. They have essentially had VAR for years, and it works very sufficiently. Football has 10,20 or even 50 times the amount of money Rugby has, why wouldn’t football follow the same blueprint? Also, the way referees are reasoning their calls and you can hear the reasoning is a commodity football should look to adopt. Glad to see they’ve brought in the Captain only thing for football, Rugby has done it for years and from a very young age we were taught to never disrespect the ref.

 

Isn’t that because not many people know the rules and fewer understand them?

 

That had definitely crossed my mind - I haven't got a clue what's going on half the time!

 

QPR player just got booked for picking up the ball to delay a throw-in. They do seem to be cracking down on it in the EFL, anyway. Maguire's was more cynical though.

 

And while I'm talking about games being refereed / played properly, you don't often see someone as fouled in the box as Michael Frey just was still doing their best to stay on their feet and ultimately set up a goal. Well played.

And a lovely finish of his own a couple of minutes later, while I was typing this. Well deserved.