The Premier League bigwigs have ruled out the chance to use foreign referees to officiate in high profile top-flight matches.
Didn’t know this could happen? Well, recently German referee Michael Weiner took charge of a Bulgarian league game between Litex Lovech and Levski Sofia.
However, a Premier League spokesman told BBC Sport: "It wouldn’t benefit the integrity of the competition to parachute referees in for games" (pictured left).
"They wouldn’t have been subject to the same accountability and evaluation processes. So, in short, no."
That’s that cleared up then. In saying that, the past year has seen our blundering refs in the spotlight after some disctinctly dodgy calls. During the World Cup, Graham Poll made a name for himself after booking Croatian Josip Simunic three times. Our man Poll also came under fire over his handling of Spurs‘ 2-1 victory over Chelsea at White Hart Lane at the beginning of last month.
Chelsea skipper John Terry is currently facing an
improper conduct charge from the FA following comments he made about Poll.
Terry had said that Poll had given him conflicting reasons for his second
yellow card in the 2-1 defeat against Tottenham on 5 November.
Oh, and he may or may not have told him to bugger off whilst he was at it. In January referee Mark Clattenburg and his two assistants failed
to spot Pedro Mendes’ shot had crossed the line by about a mile and a half during the goalless draw
between Manchester United and Tottenham Hot-Spuds. Then of course, there is the persistent divers that they keep missing, and countless dodgy penalty decisions.
The Premier League is prepared to consider bringing bringing
over top foreign referees to help with the training of English
officials, but aren’t prepared to let them loose on our pitches. We all know that the referee has the hardest job in football… but should the Premier League cut their noses off to spite their faces? Or are they secretly rubbing their hands together at all that lovely money that comes in from repeat showings on TV channels of dodgy decisions? [Mof Gimmers]