Mike Riley has his head up his own derriere

 

I was casually reading through the newspapers last weekend when I stumbled upon this interview involving the PL's refereeing chief Mike Riley and fellow referee Martin Atkinson.  I was absolutely flabbergasted at some of the ignorance, delusion and complete denial shown by these men.  This was especially true as regards the 'respect' or lack of it for officials on the football field.  Mike Riley said:

"But we’re now seeing 50  per cent fewer yellow cards for dissent than we were five years ago. We’ve got drastically reduced numbers of players being dismissed for using foul and abusive language to match officials. The respect between players and referees has never been better."

Shocking that the man running refereeing in this country is so utterly wrong or so completely corrupt.  The number of yellow and red cards is a terribly poor marker for the 'respect' shown to officials.  The reason yellows and reds for dissent has dropped so significantly is that dissent is now just tolerated by the officials, things are so dreadfully bad that referees cannot consistently punish dissent, as it would frequently lead to games becoming 5-a-side.

Referees get little support from their governing body, they are often hung out to dry, they also get no support from modern technology, despite the fact that virtually all other major sports have incorporated the use of technology to help their officials.  Dissent is so so rife that I feel sorry for the officials, players are always kicking the ball away, constantly time wasting, routinely swearing and abusing officials, referees are far more frequently surrounded and intimidated than in days gone by.  Managers like Alex Ferguson are allowed to bully referees with complete impunity.

Mike Riley is a pathetic weak man who is covering up a cancer that is eating away at the modern game.  The fact that crime is not punished in a stateless country does not mean crime does not occur, it just means that there is no enforced rule of law.  Diving and violent tackling are also other issues that need to be properly tackled with consistent disciplinary action that can only come with video technology.  Football is being run by a group of utterly incompetent fools, who else could honestly think footballing discipline had improved in recent years:  

"Inevitably we always focus on the things that go wrong, but we don’t see the 95 per cent of really good respectful behaviour that happens during a game."