Every summer Pro Ref, the new name for the referees’ body in England, visits each training ground and runs through a series of incidents so players understand what to expect.
Feedback and interaction differs from club to club. Sometimes players will get involved in healthy debates about potential fouls, although on other occasions the odd player might be caught catching a nap.
Over the past few weeks players have been shown clips of two incidents which were not penalties last season, but would be given under the new guidelines.
One was Brentford‘s Keane Lewis-Potter wrestling West Ham’s Tomas Soucek at the far post off the ball. The second was Sunderland‘s Luke O’Nien dragging down Leeds United‘s Pascal Struijk with an arm around the neck.
This season, both fall into the category of a ‘non-footballing holding action that has no place on the football pitch’.
Webb explained how another incident showed how player opinions “can be split on a grey situation”.
Crystal Palace‘s Marc Guehi was pulled down by Bournemouth‘s Bafode Diakite, with the referee awarding a spot-kick.
Some players felt Guehi had engineered the contact, others believed it was a clear holding offence.
“One player will tell you that if a penalty is not given, they expect the VAR to be involved, knowing full well that that will highly frustrate the other half of the room, who don’t see a penalty in the first place,” Webb said.
Webb says giving Guehi the penalty on field was fine, but it should not be a VAR intervention. It shows the balancing act referees and VARs face.
As has been the case for many years, Pro Ref provides officials with pre-game dossiers about how teams play. Not to influence decisions, but to give referees the best chance of identifying potential problems.
“We’ve got some highly skilled analysts who do a lot of work pre-game and give information to the officials: such as what they’re likely to see, the way that the team sets up,” Webb said.
“It gives them a higher likelihood of looking in the right place at the right time.
“We’ll look at tactics that have been used. We’ll look at a team getting an attacking set-piece and adjust the position of the referee to get a beneficial angle.
“It’s not about saying this player is a diver and therefore he’s going to dive every time he hits the deck.
“An open mind’s important, but we think on balance, having information in advance is of benefit.”
