FA/PL Bias for big 6 clubs

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Lmaobob

Lmaobob

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Thought we were genuinely in the game until the referee gave 3 extremely questionable decisions which ended up going in. I think all faith and confidence in the referees from the players was a big factor into why they seemed disinterested and lacked the motivation to keep going. Why bother when you make a perfect tackle which gets given as a free kick against you and a yellow card given?

Anyway, it got me thinking about yet again questionable decisions going the way of the big 6 clubs - surely the FA/PL want to make sure that clubs like Newcastle are up there competing for European places as it means that they are likely to sign more high profile players which raises the viewership/sponsorship/marketing brand of the Premier League and English football in general. The more teams that are in the PL pushing for European football, means it's more likely that PL clubs are going to sign the big name players. If the big clubs start to falter in the league and teams like Brighton/Aston Villa challenge for European football, I don't think it benefits the FA/PL in any way. They won't progress very far in the Europa League/Champions League so it doesn't benefit the PL/FA when it comes to viewership or commercial income because they won't pull the same amount of merchandise sales/sponsorship as the big clubs.
 

I’m not sure I sign up to it being a conspiracy but I do think there’s an unconscious bias in play. Whether they acknowledge it or not I do think officials know they will get more scrutiny for decisions against the bigger clubs. How much that influences the way they referee the game I guess will vary from person to person but in my opinion human nature will come into it a bit.
 
Yellarbellyblade said:
I’m not sure I sign up to it being a conspiracy but I do think there’s an unconscious bias in play. Whether they acknowledge it or not I do think officials know they will get more scrutiny for decisions against the bigger clubs. How much that influences the way they referee the game I guess will vary from person to person but in my opinion human nature will come into it a bit.
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It's an open secret. Mike Dean admitted it. If it's not bias against smaller teams it's VAR officials protecting the on field ref.
 
We were discussing this in the pub before the game on Sunday. Each of us were going to the game expecting some kind of controversy whatever it may be, there’s always a feeling someone is going to get shafted.

Completely takes the enjoyment out of going to the games imo. The Premier League is purely designed with the TV viewers in mind. My enthusiasm for going to games these days has honestly never been lower.
 
VAR has been introduced to make sure the bigger clubs get the decisions. Just a couple of examples the Man United keeper virtually punching the Wolves attacker, if Wes does that its a penalty. The offside goal than Man City scored against Fulham, if that's us then after a VAR check it gets cancelled out. I found it ironic on Sunday that Gordon handled the ball in virtually the same place as Egan conceded the penalty against Man City and neither decision went our way.
 
Not the PL, but the penalty vs Blackburn in the QF.

Nobody in the stadium appealed for a penalty or even considered that one might be given. Even the striker that hit it and was 5 yards from it with an unimpeded view didn't appeal. Is it clear and obvious if 32k people missed it?

VAR didn't need to get involved - but did.

VAR is such a useful tool, it's just implemented completely wrong.
 
Yellarbellyblade said:
I’m not sure I sign up to it being a conspiracy but I do think there’s an unconscious bias in play. Whether they acknowledge it or not I do think officials know they will get more scrutiny for decisions against the bigger clubs. How much that influences the way they referee the game I guess will vary from person to person but in my opinion human nature will come into it a bit.
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My feelings to a tee.

Although I did smile to myself sat in the petrol queue last night listening to Danny Kelly. They were discussing the ridiculous hand ball penalty decisions this weekend. Kelly then says, but at the other end of the pitch the rules seems to change as Anthony Gordon was allowed to play basketball down the touchline yesterday at Bramaĺl Lane 😁
 
Pocket the remaining cash, hope for a few wins and get this season over with. It’s now pointless to piss all the money away on players to compete in the premiership because amazingly it’s not enough. The parachute payments Should see us financially secure for a couple of years hopefully.
 
Working Class Hero said:
Under the rules, I don't think there was actually anything wrong with those decisions. Whether you agree with the rules or whether they have been introduced to suit the bigger clubs, is a different matter.
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No, the rules have been made so deliberately ambiguous that the officials can decide either way and offer some post match justification, i.e they can never be wrong.

Whether that is to favour specific teams or to suit some financial agenda, is a totally different discussion. Difficult for anyone to argue that the EPL isn’t run like some sort of Masonic Lodge though. 😉
 
There's beem five or six major rule changes in the game that all coincidentally favour the top teams.

EPPP, handball rule, 5 subs and the added time rule are the obvious ones. More open for debate are the dissent rule and VAR. My POV from watching a lot of games since they have been brought in, is that its largely benefiting the top teams. With bowling green pitches, far less allowable contact, roofs on the stadiums, and modern stadia having bigger gaps from the pitch a lot of the "levelers" have been removed from the game. The financial disparity is also enormous due to state/oil ownership.

I agree with the comment above about unconscious bias. The above rules were brought in due to a media fixation ln decisions going against these top teams. It's no surprise that they feel the pressure to aplly them in their interest.

The net result will be less points to stay up, more to win the league, finish top four etc. Less upsets and a more boring league. Ironically the opposite to what made it successful in the first place.
 
Hi Stegosaurus here,

Weird how the Big 6 expands to include whichever team we've just lost against. No doubt when West Ham hammer us, we'll see the same old threads crop up aboiut "bias towards the big teams"
 
Yellarbellyblade said:
I’m not sure I sign up to it being a conspiracy but I do think there’s an unconscious bias in play. Whether they acknowledge it or not I do think officials know they will get more scrutiny for decisions against the bigger clubs. How much that influences the way they referee the game I guess will vary from person to person but in my opinion human nature will come into it a bit.
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100% - I dont think the officials go out to 'fix' a game by intentionally fucking over a team - Maybe a player they really dont like (Craig Bellamy) may not get a decision, or they would enjoy giving him a card say

However they are human, whether we like to admit it or not, we all have our favourite sibling, colleague.......... child 🤣

The English love an underdog - every season it seems everyone is willing one to do well - us, Leeds, Florist, now Vincent Kompanys Burnley, so that goes against the conspiracy theory they want the lower teams to go down, quite the opposite

However, there is the factor that with superior players, the bigger teams will get into the situations that cause the controversy more often
Getting to the byline and cutting back, shots towards goal, corners etc
As they are more in control of the game, they will get into less situations at the opposite end - last ditch tackles, throwing yourself at the ball, last man etc

Part circumstantial, part unconscious bias............ served by some, with a side of been the victim
 
Lmaobob said:
Thought we were genuinely in the game until the referee gave 3 extremely questionable decisions which ended up going in. I think all faith and confidence in the referees from the players was a big factor into why they seemed disinterested and lacked the motivation to keep going. Why bother when you make a perfect tackle which gets given as a free kick against you and a yellow card given?

Anyway, it got me thinking about yet again questionable decisions going the way of the big 6 clubs - surely the FA/PL want to make sure that clubs like Newcastle are up there competing for European places as it means that they are likely to sign more high profile players which raises the viewership/sponsorship/marketing brand of the Premier League and English football in general. The more teams that are in the PL pushing for European football, means it's more likely that PL clubs are going to sign the big name players. If the big clubs start to falter in the league and teams like Brighton/Aston Villa challenge for European football, I don't think it benefits the FA/PL in any way. They won't progress very far in the Europa League/Champions League so it doesn't benefit the PL/FA when it comes to viewership or commercial income because they won't pull the same amount of merchandise sales/sponsorship as the big clubs.
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I think that paragraph nails it and is exactly what I’ve been thinking. It must be so disheartening for the players when it seems no matter how hard you try, it’s all just a bit pointless because you can’t beat a referee. It really is a serious problem, it‘s just not a level playing field.

It’s not like these clubs with billion pound squads need a leg up but a that’s what they’re getting.

These so called top players come to the Lane, literally cheat and get rewarded for it. The two instances where they ran into the back of completely unaware stationary United players and then fell to the floor and won free kicks were disgusting.

No idea what can be done about it, but those decisions don’t happen the other way around.
 

There is certainly a bias towards the bigger clubs whether intended or not you only have to watch the game ...... any game. In the Spurs game Maddison and Son were in the ref's face all game after every tackle and not a yellow card to be seen, McBurnie says "ref he pulled my shirt" and the yellow card is out like lightning swiftly followed by the red.
The Newcastle game the ball is mostly over the line when it is handled which stops it crossing the line accidental or not the player controls the ball with his hand and gets an advantage, if he then scores it is disallowed but if he passes to a team mate who scores then it is allowed. Which fuckwit thought that one up? You can guarantee if a player of one of the lower teams does that the goal is ruled out.
The Robinson tackle sorry but you can't do that in today's game although he never touched their player. Once he goes to ground the decision is always going to go against him the dive and rolling around from the Newcastle player made up the ref's mind it was a yellow, I did fear it would be a red. What the ref did ignore were the punches thrown at JLT from Wilson I think it was, now tell me if I'm wrong if you take a swing at a player isn't that violent conduct and a red card? Again nothing given by the ref or VAR just like the elbow in Basham's face at Spurs last week never even checked it.
Man City game I think at the most we had three free kicks go our way all game which to me in a fast game of football is incredible.
 
Don't think the referees have a bias towards the top teams. And if they did, I don't think Newcastle would be one of them. And human nature is more likely to want to underdog to have a helping hand to stick it the the overprivileged, so surely they'd favour plebs like us. No, we were just spanked good and proper. And let's face it, we somehow dodged a bullet with the 1st half nailed on penalty.
Always thought the 6-0 defeat at Middlesboro in the late 80s was the low point of any Blades performance I have seen. But I reckon last Saturday beats it. And by some.......
 
When Wilder took us up , as happy as I was, I still wasn't looking to the inevitable Unconcious bias towards the Liverpools Citee Spuds etc,
When we went down, we always seemed to have a couple of dubious goal/penalty decisions go against us.

Then (after sacking Jaockanovic), I really enjoyed our football and results, Ditto last season. and would have been quite happy to stay in the Championship.

I understand that most clubs in the Prem have better players than us, but we really are also battling against Referees / VAR / and the elite pundits who know every player in the top 10 , but have very little interest or praise for any of our players.

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the only reason he controlled the ball was he knocked the rising ball down to his feet with his hand

Can't get the clip of Robinsons booking but he had got to & kicked the ball half a second or so before the Newcastle player whose momentum took himself crashing into Robbo, should he just have not joined the race for the ball and just let them have it ?
 
FATTYFOULKE said:
I think that paragraph nails it and is exactly what I’ve been thinking. It must be so disheartening for the players when it seems no matter how hard you try, it’s all just a bit pointless because you can’t beat a referee. It really is a serious problem, it‘s just not a level playing field.

It’s not like these clubs with billion pound squads need a leg up but a that’s what they’re getting.

These so called top players come to the Lane, literally cheat and get rewarded for it. The two instances where they ran into the back of completely unaware stationary United players and then fell to the floor and won free kicks were disgusting.

No idea what can be done about it, but those decisions don’t happen the other way around.
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Longstaff just kept running into the back of Hamer and winning a free kick. Not sure Hamer knew he was there at all.

So I was quite glad to see JLT smash Longstaff.
 
There's no money or corruption in that sense, just bias because who does a ref want to upset less Pep or Hecky. If Pep moans about him he could get taken off the PL list for the following week. If Hecky complains no one cares so its the path of least resistance.
 
Working Class Hero said:
Under the rules, I don't think there was actually anything wrong with those decisions. Whether you agree with the rules or whether they have been introduced to suit the bigger clubs, is a different matter.
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Agreed - handball goes against the defender and for the attacker. The big six will spend more time attacking and us defending so there will be a natural tilt in favour of them through increased time in our area. It's a subtle couple of percent in their favour. Same with being able to use five subs. Same with added time, because their five subs will be better.
 
Lets see what the FA do now that Sheffield United are under investigation due to items being thrown on the pitch. Most clubs including Forest get/got away with it but do you honestly think we will. Indeed, no doubt the County Council and Safety committee will get involved and we'll have half our ground closed down for the rest of the season....................you just watch!
 
Stegosaurus said:
Hi Stegosaurus here,

Weird how the Big 6 expands to include whichever team we've just lost against. No doubt when West Ham hammer us, we'll see the same old threads crop up aboiut "bias towards the big teams"
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I think a club owned by the Saudi royal family and the almost unlimited wealth that provides probably counts as a big club myself.
We were terrible second half and got what we deserved but we didn’t get the rub of the green first half and given some of the stuff that’s happened not just to us but other lesser teams it’s a legitimate conversation
 
everyone believes the refs are out to get them.

I’ve seen Man Utd fans adamant they are being cheated every game.
 
bladesadviser said:
VAR has been introduced to make sure the bigger clubs get the decisions. Just a couple of examples the Man United keeper virtually punching the Wolves attacker, if Wes does that its a penalty. The offside goal than Man City scored against Fulham, if that's us then after a VAR check it gets cancelled out. I found it ironic on Sunday that Gordon handled the ball in virtually the same place as Egan conceded the penalty against Man City and neither decision went our way.
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welcome to the prem mate
 
Working Class Hero said:
Under the rules, I don't think there was actually anything wrong with those decisions. Whether you agree with the rules or whether they have been introduced to suit the bigger clubs, is a different matter.
Click to expand...
So Burnley were robbed of a goal when Berge handled the ball by accident passed to another player to score just like Gordon at the Lane ?
 

Bladesman said:
It's an open secret. Mike Dean admitted it. If it's not bias against smaller teams it's VAR officials protecting the on field ref.
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Yes Dean came out and said when he was in charge of VAR he let a mistake go because the ref on the pitch was his mate and he did not want to over rule him .
 
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