Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there can surely be only a select few who can deny that events in recent years indicate David Coote has an implicit bias against Liverpool Football Club.
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 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.
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!
Scott Murray did @guardian_sport live minute-by-minute blog of Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Aston Villa on Saturday and, well, this paragraph. pic.twitter.com/YYoTbj7gzV
— Sachin Nakrani (@SachinNakrani) November 11, 2024
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?
If not corrupt then we are talking about incompetence but when this is expressed far more against specific teams then one has to ask why such incompetence is not seen in all matches. Could just be an unfortunate accumulation of isolated phenomena but tempting to state that such targeted incompetence probably suggests natural bias against certain teams. Fortunately different referees seem to apply but his against different teams so to some extent event itself out. Should this excuse things: definitely not and last year Liverpool had some difficult to accept decisions (more than most teams and cost them critical points and maybe even the title). All teams remember the decisions that were not given in their favour and conveniently forget those which worked for them. All this is made more difficult by the clear play acting encouraged by certain teams: not always those cited most. Indeed some players have a functional problem as they seem to have great difficulty staying on their feet while running on grass. Do not see many teams happy with the referees however and VAR as applied in UK is not correcting these bad decisions as it does far more in rugby for example. Having someone able to check what might legitimately be overlooked on field only works if VAR actually does its job and not just sitting back until the onfield ref asks for a second opinion.
That is a very fair assesment and i believe Mr Coote has a problem with Liverpool football club and the people of Liverpool which has been highlighted by us Liverpool fans which has cost our club several titles over a number of season .
I think that there is only one option for Mr Coote and that is walk away and never referee again . As for the PGMOL an investigation needs to be taken on how they are run and the mistakes that are made each week on a VAR that should not make mistakes and some responsabilty taken against them.
Agree wholeheartedly – that VAR with the angles/technology time to examine/should not make mistakes/but they do – and rightly so the question asked is how…if the answer is incompetence/then who is appointing incompetent officials – and further why. I did see an article about the close domestic proximity of all these referees/that in itself immediately raises red flags for me – do we not have a big enough pool of competent referees across all of England/the answer to that question is/must be YES – then why are they all coming from a relative same area/one could prognosticate that there is some band of brothers going on/indeed if that should be the case – then again that in itself is plainly bad management. Finally for me – referees should be under the scrutiny of an impartial board – to put it plainly one that is not made up solely of referees…my guess would be one third referees/two thirds individuals other than referees (probably who have been in the game some time i.e. management/coaching/playing/even as a supporter)!!! YNWA
The solution for a start is to NOT have refs on VAR, it needs to be a separate team and the refs need to drop their problem with “rereffing” the game. It’s this culture of wanting to protect your mate that’s the problem, this has exposed to inherent biases in refs, so it should naturally follow that refs are biased towards their mate so less likely to correct and incorrect decisions if it’ll reflect badly on their colleague.
I also think that this is the time to introduce foreign refs, I think all European leagues should have foreign refs, you can avoid bias that way as there are very few club rivalries that span across nations. A Spanish ref isn’t going to have a particular hatred for say, United.
This is certainly not an isolated case.
There are more cases like this if not worse.
Time will expose them.
PGMOL is a cartel. A boy’s club, where membership seems to be for life regardless of how many mistakes a ref makes.
Some of the decisions have been inexplicable. The Rodri handball against Everton and the Odegaard handball defy logic.
It’s laughable the Odegaard handball wasn’t given when you see the one given against Arsenal recently in the Champions League.
999,999 refs out of 1,000,000 would have given it.
All us Liverpool fans have said for years referees like tierny and coote had it in for us now we at least know coote definitely has its time pgmol stood up and done the right thing sack him and warn every referee that they are closely being monitored because this isn’t just a Liverpool problem other clubs are getting treated like us by certain referees it needs to stop
Come on people Mr Coote was either too stupid or too arrogant and thought his “mate”would never expose him but lets get one thing clear he will not be an isolated case where there’s one there’s many so it’s fair to assume that more (bent) referees in the club and let’s not forget that the head of that club is run by a former member of the S Yorkshire Police force and they are the ones that accused the Liverpool fans of causing the tragedy at Hillsborough thank heavens the inquiry in 2012 found that the blame actually went to the said Police force for inadequate control..is anyone remotely connected to that organisation going to hold Liverpool or it’s fans in high esteem ?
Referees bias against Liverpool is obvious,many times I have said every 50 50 goes against us.
The decisions discussed should have been overturned by VAR,why not, because the Referees are in cahoots with each other
When I listen to some of the discussions between on field officials and VAR officials, it is all like “Mate this and mate that, and Kaz this and Baz that!!!” This does not sound professional at all. In any other profession, it is very formal, especially when you are in front of clients, customers or patients. It sounds like one big “Old Boys Club” and that is why I do not see much happening to Mr. David Coote. They will all try to save his pathetic rear end.