Which of England's young prospects have what it takes on the international stage? And with referees in the news for the wrong reasons, what can be done to make officiating better? Our expert panel weighs in.
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00:00Welcome back to the Premier League panel. Now, it's been a pretty bad week for top
00:08flight referees in England, with a video emerging which purportedly shows Premier League referee
00:13David Coote using some choice language to describe Liverpool, and in particular, former
00:17manager Jürgen Klopp. Coote's been suspended pending an investigation. Jason, I think we
00:22can all agree, if the video is genuine, then he probably wasn't very clever to allow himself
00:26to be filmed making such comments. But is there any part of you that has a little bit
00:30of sympathy for his thoughts, particularly on Klopp? Because to my mind, the way that
00:34officials, particularly fourth officials, are treated to get spoken to by a lot of managers
00:39can be pretty shocking at times.
00:41Yeah, I think, I mean, first and foremost, what is he doing? You know, I think we can
00:49all agree, what are you doing? Allowing yourself to be filmed saying those things is just absolutely
00:56ludicrous and unprofessional to the nth degree. And I agree with you on the point
01:01that I think that some of the hesitators say abuse, but the excessive criticism that officials
01:10come in for is, yeah, completely out of line. I think that we almost have a tendency to
01:15forget that they are people with emotions and feelings. And that, you know, they are
01:21inevitably going to have lines that, when crossed, are going to lead to express frustrations,
01:27however unadvisable that might be. The one thing I would say, where I do sort of have
01:33some sympathy for him, is that, look, everybody works with people. Sometimes you're going
01:41to work with people who you don't get on with, who you don't particularly care for.
01:45Is there a comment on anyone in this call, Jason?
01:48I'm not naming any names, Matthew. I'm not naming any names. But genuinely though, like,
01:53you know, in a workplace environment, and that's ultimately where he comes across someone
01:59like a Jurgen Klopp, you're not always going to be best buddies with everybody. You're
02:02going to have people who you clash with. You're going to have personalities that don't quite
02:06click with yours. And you're going to have people who you actually think are just a bit
02:09rotten. That's going to happen. The big question here is, does it, or has it in the past, affected
02:18his ability to be professional? Has it negatively impacted the way that he has officiated Liverpool
02:23matches? That is a different question. He is allowed to dislike Jurgen Klopp. He's allowed
02:29to have any opinion of anybody that he wants. I probably shouldn't express them, but what
02:33appears to be an afters at seven in the morning on someone's couch, but whatever. But that
02:39being said, as long as it doesn't impact the way that he does his job, the way that he
02:43conducts himself, then it's kind of a non issue. Like, obviously he's going to be dragged
02:49across the course of this. Obviously he's probably going to serve some sort of suspension
02:52if it does turn out to be real. I've seen people on the internet talking about deep
02:56fakes. I feel, you know, if you had that technology at your fingertips is the first person you'd
03:00go after is David Coutt. I'm not too sure, but anyway. But it does come down to that,
03:07you know, like if he's doing his job properly, he's allowed to dislike people. He's going
03:11to be suspended, potentially banned, all of those sorts of things, kind of understandably
03:16so. But I really do think that it's, it's maybe being made out to be a much, much bigger
03:21issue than it actually is.
03:23Oh, what are your thoughts, Mark? Because is there any way to make the relationship
03:28between referees and managers and players and so on less antagonistic? Because it is
03:33creating problems like this. And as Jason said, I mean, it can potentially could cause
03:37an issue with making, you know, referees, you know, unconsciously biased in the decisions
03:42they're making if they do have an issue with the players or managers they're working with.
03:45And I think, you know, almost all of us would find ourselves struggling to be as even handed
03:51as we'd like if we were busy getting, having someone screaming in our face every five minutes,
03:55you know, I mean, do you think there is a way to sort this out basically to tone the
03:59situation down?
04:01Just communication. Just got to talk more and talk sensibly and have adult conversations
04:05rather than having managers talk down to referees or, and I've got to be honest, this works
04:10two ways, by the way, because I've seen referees and we could name referees on here if we wanted
04:15to, we won't, but we could, who consistently talk down to, to players, to managers, to
04:20assistants, to anyone. So I just feel it's, it's time for everyone involved in the game
04:26to have, you know, adult conversations and grown up conversations about where we're going
04:31here with this relationship. Look, let's be honest. And I'll bring this down to grassroots.
04:36We couldn't have the game without referees, without officials. So there has to be a degree
04:39of respect, but this goes all the way to grassroots. Again, respect has to work both ways. What
04:45I will say on Coop himself, two things really, one, it's incredibly naive what he's done.
04:51Incredibly naive. And secondly, it's quite unfortunate that he and other officials, I
04:58guess, that have been caught out in the past with maybe not stuff like this, but certainly
05:02wearing football tops of certain clubs and stuff like that. They're almost doing it like
05:07Union stands at Trammere. It's also, it's that element of that. They can't trust anyone.
05:16And that's quite sad to work in an environment where you can't trust anyone, even, you know,
05:21whoever this is with Kuda, if it is a friend, then that's even more unfortunate. But I just
05:26think, yeah, going back to the original question, it really is a case of everyone sitting down
05:31and talking about it properly, working through issues properly. It's maybe highlighted something
05:38a bit more deep rooted within the game, within the relationship between officials and everyone
05:42else.