The standard of refereeing in England is a joke. It’s a laughing stock that the best league in the world, the premier league, has utterly incapable and frankly useless officials who can’t make the most basic of decisions. The level of inconsistency week to week, or even game to game, is also a major cause for concern. The fact that different teams get different decisions simply due to the size or stature of the club. Or that different players get treated and dealt with differently for the same offence, for example England captain Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo get away with things that someone like Granit Xhaka would be banned for. There is some serious belief amongst football fans in England and across the world, who watch the premier league, that there must be some form of corruption. I personally refuse to believe that the officials can be so bad without an external source. Every single week there’s a new shocking decision, this week there has been several. Van Dijk should have been sent off for his challenge in the Merseyside derby, West Ham were robbed of a perfectly fine equaliser, Aston Villa were robbed of a potential winner, just because the officials for some reason decided to blow for offside early, something they haven’t done ALL SEASON, exactly for the reason that the decision can then be reviewed by VAR. Does that rule not apply to Man City? I could go on, and on, and on about the relentless mistakes and blatant stupidity from the officials in this country. If the fans watching at home were able to hear the officials, both the on-field referee and those in VAR, this would go a long way to solving the problem. The fans would start to be able to trust the officials if we knew what was happening. Right now, we have no clue what they say to each other, we have no insight into the decision making. Why is that? Are they scared of their own incompetence? Do they not want the fans to realise how incapable they are? Just in case that’s what they think, we have already realised. We ask one simple thing, allow the fans to hear the officials, to know what happens. If they’re scared that the players will swear or say bad things at the ref and it’ll reach the TV mics, all they have to do is actually clamp down on dissent. I don’t understand why this hasn’t already happened, just book a player for dissent and don’t be afraid to send them off either.