People “like Bruno Fernandes and Andy Robertson” are to thank for the new hardline stance of refereeing in the Premier League, says TalkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan.
Supporters have been given a taste of what is to come in the opening weeks of the 2023/24 campaign to mixed responses. Officials are cracking down on behaviour such as arguing with decisions, crowding the referee and time-wasting amongst others, with yellow cards and time added on after 90 minutes the punishments for offenders.
There has also been nine red cards handed out in the Premier League so far this season, which after game week three puts the new season on course to see 126 sendings off by the going rate, the previous season only seeing 30.
Two of those have been to Liverpool in their last two matches, Alexis Mac Allister in the second half against Bournemouth and Virgil van Dijk in the first half against Newcastle United.
However Mac Allister saw his quickly rescinded once an appeal was lodged, bringing VAR into scrutiny for not rectifying this in the first place as officials hope not to ‘re-referee’ decisions, despite it being there to help reach the correct conclusions.
But Jordan has gone on a scathing rant to tell everyone involved to accept the new changes as they have brought it upon themselves, namedropping Reds full-back Robertson as one particular culprit.
“There’s this refusal to accept authority on the pitch,” he told TalkSPORT. “You do not hear [after a] rugby game the media feeling the necessity to interrogate a refereeing decision up hill and down dale.
“I don’t like the idea that you have little Mussolinis running around the pitch without any accountability and I also don’t like the idea that the lunatics run the asylum.
“I don’t like that the managers and the players think that they can behave the way they want to behave and whatever they’ve got now they can thank themselves.
“They can thank people like Bruno Fernandes or Andy Robertson for pushing it to such a point last year that the refereeing fraternity were like ‘right, that will do’.”
The former Crystal Palace chairman admitted that officials are not exempt from their own accountability, but maintained his heavily-critical view of the behaviour of modernday professionals.
“It’s nothing like the days where Roy Keane and that mob used to run around hounding referees within and inch of their lives,” he continued. “But we’re in a different society now and I am for this idea of authority on the pitch.
“That doesn’t mean that if he doesn’t do his job that he isn’t accountable for it, the standards we should be asking referees to be held to are the highest ones.
“But if they’re spending less time working their way through argumentative, belligerent, truculent gamesmanship from managers and players and more time focusing on rules and understanding every aspect of the game, and more time that the rule value in the game is maintained – which is integrity of decisions – we might find a better outcome.
“People are going to have to suck it up in the meantime.”
