Simon Hooper, much like many ‘top-tier’ Premier League referees, has a history of making mistakes and his horror show at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium wasn’t even the first time this season he’s made headlines.
The opening game of the campaign saw the 41-year-old be part of a team that failed to see that Andre Onana clattered into Sasa Kalajdzic, deep into stoppage time at Old Trafford.
This was such a clear and obvious error that it led to the Swindon-born official being stepped down for the following set of league fixtures but that was seen as enough penance for his actions (via The Independent).
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The main question that comes from this is, how can an official that is deemed not good enough to officiate a match in the second set of fixtures be handed a game of such magnitude in gameweek seven?
Now that the man who was promoted to the Select Group in 2018 has made another high profile error, or at least been involved in the team that did – it’s likely he’ll receive a similar punishment again.
However, it won’t be too long before another incorrect decision is made that will massively affect the teams at the top of the table and so it calls into question whether the men in charge of our games are actually good enough.
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Until the technology can make decisions for itself and we no longer have to rely on inept users of it, there should be major questions over whether we can trust the PGMOL to select the right people to make these decisions.
It can’t be that we still have so many major issues on decisions that are a matter of fact and the punishments need to be so much more severe.