The Guardian’s deputy football editor, Sachin Nakrani, recalled his colleague, Scott Murray, describing Coote as the most ‘idiosyncratic official in the Premier League’ during a live blog covering Liverpool v Aston Villa.
A now-viral video, which the Premier League referee acknowledges as genuine, is merely the cherry on top of the cake. An absolute confirmation of what fans suspected of the 42-year-old.Ultimately, of course, this should be a huge disappointment for all involved with English football.
Then there are a number of uncomfortable questions which must be raised about the integrity of officials.If one referee holds these views about a former Liverpool manager and the club – who’s to say this is an isolated case?David Coote’s latest refereeing display revealed a lot
The review followed the Englishman’s rather bizarre decision to disregard Leon Bailey’s plainly illegal challenge on Mo Salah before Darwin Nunez’s goal.We’d argue that “idiosyncratic” is somewhat generous!
We did go on to secure all three points against Aston Villa at the weekend, though it was certainly in no thanks to Coote’s inconsistent officiating.What next for the PGMOL?
The PGMOL have already made the decision to suspend the Nottinghamshire referee pending the outcome of a full investigation into comments he made several years ago.
One potential, and quite possibly likely, outcome that emerges from all of this is that the individual involved loses his job.Perhaps that on its own may be seen in some quarters as the most appropriate course of action.
But does it get to the core of the issue?It is at least suspected amongst the majority of football fans that Premier League referees hold implicit biases.
Yet, as one might expect, we’ve seen PGMOL chief Howard Webb come out and dismiss any such concerns back in October.“In general terms, I mean, there’s a real lack of forgiveness in the game at the moment,” the former Premier League official spoke on Sky Bet’s The Overlap.
I mean it’s like the thing that really frustrates me a little bit is that any error you make is seen as something different. “It’s seen as a contrived decision that’s done for different reasons. It’s really not, you make a judgement in the moment.
All of our referees want to do a good job, they don’t want to be spoken about, they want to go out there, be anonymously competent, they don’t want to go there and upset people.
Sometimes they’ll call situations wrongly, it’s a sad sort of reflection really. It used to be correct or incorrect, now it’s correct or corrupt in too many cases now – which is just nonsense really.
The problem now, of course, is that Coote’s private thoughts and evident biases have become anything but anonymous.We can have a serious discussion about societal malevolence and question the intentions of whoever decided to initially pass the clips around several years after the fact.
Ultimately, though, the most important question we should all be asking football’s officiating body is this: How can you restore our trust in the integrity of your referees?
