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August 16, 2024

Premier League, EFL, WSL Referee Appointments Policy Published

By Caoimhe O’Neill

The policy defining the selection process for match officials in the Women’s Super League, Premier League, and English Football League has been released for the first time.

Howard Webb, chief of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the governing body for referees in England, announced the move as part of efforts to increase transparency. PGMOL aims to make the appointment policy and its guidelines accessible to the public.

Following initial confusion after Webb’s comments, PGMOL clarified that the personal allegiances of individual officials will not be disclosed publicly.

This decision follows several refereeing controversies, particularly in last season’s Premier League. Nottingham Forest, for instance, accused Stuart Attwell of being biased towards Luton Town after a controversial 2-0 defeat to Everton, where Attwell served as the Video Assistant Referee (VAR).

“Officials are asked to declare any specific interests in advance of the season and as the season goes on should any of those things change,” Webb explained. “That (the appointment policy) will be made public I believe and coming out as well so you can see what that looks like and what those declarations of interest are.

“We review each of those and then make a judgement if we feel that there’s a conflict of interests based on if you declare yourself as a supporter of a club, if you play for a club as well as we are trying to get more players into refereeing. So that’s a new area that we need to work with. And if you’ve got any personal connections to people that work for clubs as well.

“We’ll make an evaluation of all of those and then should we consider there is a conflict of interest then that will be recorded and will be taken into account on the appointments.”

(Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

What the Policy States

In addition to the Premier League, EFL Championship, and WSL, the policy helps determine which officials are eligible to referee matches in the Carabao Cup, EFL Trophy, FA Cup (men’s and women’s), Women’s Championship, and more.

Referees are prohibited from officiating a contest if they have a conflict of interest, according to the policy. If an official has a personal interest in a club’s success—such as having held a season ticket in the past—they would be deemed ineligible to referee that club’s matches.

This also applies if an official has previously played for a club or has a significant personal connection, such as a business interest or a family member employed by the club.

After referees submit their declarations of interest, PGMOL decides which matches they can officiate.

On Excessive Stoppage Time

Ahead of the new season, Webb addressed concerns regarding the latest guidelines for referees to allow 30 seconds after a goal is scored before adding it to stoppage time. This approach has raised questions about whether the decision reflects an acknowledgment that stoppage time was excessively long last season.

Webb explained that the aim is to ensure a more accurate reflection of time lost during a match without unnecessarily extending stoppage time. The 30-second guideline helps standardize the process so that every goal, celebration, and restart is accounted for consistently. This move is seen as an effort to balance fairness and game flow, following feedback that some matches had overly long stoppage periods last season.

“In terms of the 30 seconds,” Webb said. “Last year, we complied with the law change around calculating time for stoppages precisely and also being more robust in-game with those situations that delay restarts, infractions are clear, deliberate and impactful.

“We did see an increase in the effective playing time but it came at a bit of a price in terms of the actual amount of time. The amount of effective playing time took more than the actual time that was played, that was put on the board. We saw an awful lot of goals last year. We saw something like 3.4 goals per game compared to previously 2.7 or 2.8. So that was a big increase. Each goal takes on average about 66 seconds to celebrate in the Premier League.

“So if you’ve got a game with six goals in the second half and each one takes over a minute, that’s automatically over seven minutes amount of added time. And the feedback we were getting from people in the game was that was maybe a little bit excessive. So we’ve looked at what we can do to find a good sweet spot if you like in that respect. Still reflecting the time that’s lost to make the game fair but also not being too excessive.

“We think that 30 seconds is a pretty normal amount of time that a team would need to go back and reset after a goal. Then you’ve got the celebrations which can can be quite extended after that. So we add that time beyond the 30 seconds, bring it back down to something a little bit less than where we were last year. We think that’s a reasonable sweet spot, particularly in a game like ours where we’re having so many goals scored and therefore we’re seeing pretty big numbers on the board.

“We’re thinking there’s probably a compromise to reach on that, still being pretty respectful to the principles around adding time on but also being pretty robust within the 90 minutes to deal with players who do like restarts in a clear, deliberate and impactful way.”

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