I was just coming here to quote that as an example of the pretty awful behaviour that this recent trend of every club genuinely believing all the refs are against them causes. This is from the assistant ref on the day.
"After the final whistle while we were leaving the field of play, we were approached by
Nottingham Forest coach Steven Reid. Reid made several comments regarding our
integrity as a group of officials. Reid made a comment calling Paul a “c*nt” at least
three times. Also after being shown the red card he continued to make comments about
the PGMOL making reference to the group of referees being against his club”
We can add Nottingham Forest to the growing list of clubs who believe PGMOL are corrupt/biased against them for whatever reasons they have convinced themselves of. The fact it's coming from an actual member of staff is alarming.
I think what is more alarming is that Steven Reid was on the inside working for the Premier League last season reviewing key match incidents. As he said himself he worked every week with the PGMOL. He knows how the organisation operates. He knows how match officials operate.
In life, you will get people or clubs you dislike for whatever reason. The sign of a fair and robust organisation is to ensure that those dislikes and biases do not influence an individual's performance. To put in place checks and counterbalances that ensure the organisation is as open and as fair as possible. A well-run organisation for instance has robust and clear rules that prevent conflicts of interest such as officials working for owners of Premier League clubs as a profitable sideline.
A well-run organisation reacts in the right way to criticism. It doesn't double down, close ranks and look to punish people who complain about an aspect or individual within the organisation. Above all, a well-run organisation admits its mistakes and looks to rectify them. It doesn't have Howard Webb doing a propaganda program on Sky looking to gaslight people.
I think it is almost certain that each club has a referee that takes a dislike to the club or even an individual player for whatever reason and subconsciously does not referee them fairly. That is inevitable and why you have a large pool of officials and rotate them to mitigate any bias or dislike. You also make it clear that you will educate and give the officials the tools to ensure they officiate as evenly as possible.
I think it is inevitable that some officials will dislike certain aspects of a team or an individual. The issue for me is twofold. Firstly LFC and Scousers have way more things to dislike because of generations of negative stereotypes being basically rammed down people's throats. Add in things like being anti-Tory, anti-monarchy, anti-establishment, and the typical background of the current officials and there are plenty of reasons why bias might exist.
The second is the PGMOL's attitude of refusing to put measures in place to stop that bias. Instead of rotating officials, we get fewer individual referees officiating our home games. We get far more officials who give us fewer decisions doing far more of our games than anyone else. Above all we get Tierney who has clear issues with LFC and Klopp getting a third of our games this season.
For me, the PGMOL is a biased, corrupt, badly run, not fit-for-purpose shambles. Unfortunately for us, it has way more reasons to dislike us than anyone else and that is why we basically get fucked over more than anyone else. Everyone being on the end of bad decisions and Liverpool being on the end of far more bad decisions are not mutually exclusive.
