Frank Dacey

The year Liecester won the league, Kevin Friend was moved from reffing a Stoke v Tottenham game because he was based in Liecester, though I've been told that he actually supported Bristol City. So PGMOL could do it then. The simple solution yesterdy was to move Attwell to VAR our game at Fulham, two teams completely irrelevant to the relegtion issue. That way they don't cause a potential shitshow for themselves.

There was a Championship game about 10 days ago involving Birmingham and due to be reffed by Bobby Madley, who is known to be a Huddersfield fan, one of Birmingham's relegation rivals. The Brummie fans got a petition up to remove from the game and they were successful. Madley was sent to referee Bristol City instead, who were playing Blackburn, one of Huddersfield's relegation rivals..... I see Coote and Attwell have been vilified as VARs. They are two of the weakest PL officials on the pitch. There's no way they'll have the backbone to overturn senior refs like Oliver or Taylor in the VAR booth.

That's a nice piece of modelling. I have to confess to being into model railways and these days the engines come fitted with sound chips. I wonder if these do and what the soundtrack would be? Any suggestions?

They're a mixture of some promising younger ones and some absolute garbage who've been on the list for ages and never been given a go in the PL. People like Geoff Eltringham or David Webb.

And yet Kevin Friend is now in charge of Select group 2 officials. Why would we not be surprised about that?

I see that David Coote has been chosen as a VAR for the Olympic football tournament this summer. My mind is boggling again.

Roger East. In my view he was worse than Lee Mason. I know, the mind boggles.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/03/28/jon-moss-left-pgmol-role-falling-out-with-top-referees/ Read this story a few days ago. Two things struck me; how is a known incompetent given a position of authority in PGMOL. I believe Lee Mason has a role with them. No wonder standards are so low. Second; it suggests a certain arrogance among our officials that they so resent criticism. It fits in with the point you made last week about the rumours that Oliver has told his colleagues not to send him to the monitor because it makes him look bad. How different to cricket where the umpires seem to be fine with having their decisions reviewed.

Very sad news, remember him well. Won the UEFA cup in 1973, our first European trophy. Not bad for a lad we picked up for peanuts from Bristol Rovers. We were great at picking up hidden gems in those days; Keegan and Clemence from Scunthorpe for under £60 grand for the pair of them.

Wonder what the Arsenal reaction to that will be?

The umpires in cricket don't seem to mind when they get a decison overturned, they just accept it, probably because it's widely accepted that making those decisions is difficult. The same applies in rugby, but in football it almost seems like a reluctance to admit that the onfield ref has got anything wrong. I read a piece by Keith Hackett who said that Oliver missed the decision last Sunday because he was unsighted. If that were the case then he should say as much to Attwell and ask for his help or even directly say to Attwell that he's going to the screen to look for himself and to get the clips ready for him.

Thing about Bournemouth is they're punching two divisions above their weight. For almost all their existence they've been in the third of fourth tier, so to be spending 6 or so seasons in the top flight is amazing and the people that are behind that have done a great job. Whether they can do a similar job at a big club is a different question.

I can't tell you what Hughes' shoe size is, but I did teach his two younger brothers and they were smashing kids; bright, hard-working and well-behaved without being goody two shoes. If their elder brother is like them then fine. As I recall, the family have some scottish blood in them so I'm sure Kenny will be giving Hughes the benefit of his advice about the Liverpool Way. Forest's whining reminded me of a game against West Brom in the season they got up when they benefitted from a terrible decision when a throw to West Brom was actually taken by them and they ended up getting a corner, from which they scored. There was uproar but the Forest line after was that West Brom had the chance to set up properly for the corner, didn't and had only themselves to blame. Does that sound familiar?

Forest have a nerve to be omplaining about officiating. The only reason they're in the PL is that Mike Riley gave his mate, fat, useless Jon Moss the play-off final as a retirement present. Moss denied Huddersfield two penalties, one an absolute stonewaller and Forest scraped a 1-0 win. I don't understand the view that Forest are a 'big team'; they had a good spell under Clough but otherwise it's a story of consistent mediocrity with the exception of one FA cup win when they triumphed over mighty Luton. I'm glad you called Yates out. He's a championship level clogger at best. It says something for Forest's recruitment that despite all the players they've brought in, he's still getting a game. You should also add him to your list of those with punchable faces. It winds me up just looking at him.

Not the usual stuff on here but definitely relevant.