The legendary Gary Mabbutt is continuing to check in on our elderly fans with regular phone calls on their birthdays. Today he’s made his 20,000 call in the last six years.
Incredible work, Mabbsy 🤍
Get rid of VAR immediately.
No one can give a coherent argument as to why it’s better because 99% of decisions needed to be made aren’t objective, they’re subjective so now you’re just killing the soul of the game just for another set of subjective eyes to see it.
And you end up making refereeing worse because they’re human and naturally they will want to avoid certain calls because of VAR behind them.
Even if VAR wasn’t as much of a shambles, you still get rid of it for the good of the game.
In terms of refereeing, you have a huge rewrite of the rules, and you release statements at the start of each season explaining how the game will be reffed this season.
Eg, I’d be saying “people call for consistency but it’s impossible because the game is so quick and every situation is different. These are what we believe the objective thresholds are now in terms of dangerous play etc, and we leave it down to refs interpretation, but appreciate it’s a human sport, human error, like anyone.”
Now everyone knows where they stand, people stop bitching and we can hold officials accountable for their own standards , like any other job. If they continuously underperform, then they’re not the level and they get let go, or go and improve themselves and work back up again.
Then, we can just focus on bloody football.
Referees terrified of making decisions in case they get it wrong.
VAR terrified of intervening in case they undermine the referee.
The Premier League in 2026 everybody.