Yeah I know the irony of saying this as a city fan, but seriously, the treatment they are getting is no better than dele alli or maguire. I know they constantly make shit calls and protect each others’ shit calls and so on, but it’s not like they purposely tried to be bad. For their own sake I hope they don’t go anywhere online, coz if it were me I would jump right off a bridge seeing all those comments. I get that it’s super frustrated when they make a bad call aganist your team, but that doesn’t justified making shit comments. Mental health matters for everyone, not just people you like.
But perhaps more importantly, who the fuck would want to be a ref? Even if someone tried, they most likely will quit within a few years. The abuse don’t just happen in the prem, but also in lower leagues and even youth levels. If no new refs are coming in, the refs that we all love to complain about will still be here 10 years later, and the refs performance would still remain the same. Championship refs are just the same if not worse and promoting them is not a solution.
Game/player management and foul selection were the major issues being addressed when I stopped officiating. Those areas are what referees learn once they’ve demonstrated that they have good foul recognition.
Just this weekend, Wolves won the game because the referee DIDN’T call the foul in an area of the pitch where you’d usually see a foul call given. No fan would have picked up let alone give credit where credit is due on something like that.
In fact, fans almost never give credit to referees for goals being scored from giving advantage or not giving those free kicks. An inexperienced or “fan ref” would always give those calls and cost a team a potential goal.