Mark Halsey: Referees have to walk alone at Anfield, or they will walk into trouble

When you are out there on the pitch you need to filter out all those chants, cheers and jeers and concentrate 100 per cent on the game going on around you. If you don’t walk alone, you’re asking for big trouble.

It takes experience to do that – and this weekend when Wanderers go to Anfield in search of a spot of giant-killing, it’s down to Kevin Friend to make sure we’re not talking about a bad decision after the final whistle.

It is entirely down to mental strength. Can you ignore what 10,000 people are saying behind the goal and make your own mind up?

It is definitely not easy. When I refereed at Liverpool there would be times when you’d given a throw-in or something the home fans didn’t agree with and your mind might wonder for a few seconds, and you’d digest some of the words being aimed at you. My response was always to stick out my tongue – and they definitely didn’t like that.

When you are live on the television there is an extra bit of pressure on you to get the big calls right, Kevin will know that, and it’s down to him to make sure he keeps his focus for 90 minutes.

But personally, I’m really looking forward to the game. You can tell people around the town are too.

I’d imagine Brendan Rogers will put his strongest side out there trying to get a bit of continuity as their results in the Premier League have started to pick up of late.

The last thing he will want is to get dumped out of the cup by a Championship team on live TV.

But it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility. This is a different Bolton Wanderers than it was six months ago – there are smiles on people’s faces and Neil Lennon has got the whole club working together again.

And why can’t they go there and cause an upset? Bolton have done it before and the spirit the manager has clearly got in his team at the moment tells me they can do it again.

I’ve noticed that Neil has not been particularly happy with the standard of refereeing in the Championship this last few weeks, and I don’t blame him.

From what I saw at the weekend Graham Scott was a bit “indifferent” let’s say – but for once it looks like Bolton got a couple of decisions that went their way. I’m sure the fans will say they were due a little bit of good luck.

Neil also bit his lip after the game and didn’t criticise the officials, which was a good call. You have to pick your battles.

I was delighted to see them get back to winning ways in what looked a real hard-fought match in the mud.

Of course, Bolton will have their work cut out to get anything at Anfield but the way things are right now, anything is possible.

I know which team I’ll be backing when I sit down and watch the game on Saturday evening.

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REFEREES up and down the land were shaking their head in embarrassment when they saw Chris Foy disallow Jan Vertonghen’s goal against Sunderland for offside this weekend.

It’s the worst decision I have seen in a long, long time and simply should not be happening at this level. It shouldn’t even be happening on a council pitch in the Sunday League.

You can’t be offside in your own half. Everyone knows that.

Chris has an assistant referee who is paid £800 to get those calls right but at White Hart Lane you’ve also got a fourth official on the half way line. The referee was also right up with play and surely he could see the pass from Paulinho was played in his own half? It wasn’t even close.

The fourth official should have had a word down the headset, and Chris could have avoided all the stick by allowing the goal to stand.

I was flying back from Spain at the time and as soon as I stepped off the plane I turned on my phone and my Twitter account was going bananas with people asking if there was some loophole in the offside rule they didn’t know about.

It wasn’t the only strange decision of the weekend.

The TV cameras picked up Burnley’s Scott Arfield wrestling with Crystal Palace’s Joel Ward off the pitch before putting the ball through for Danny Ings to score on Saturday.

For all young referees out there – Phil Dowd should have stopped the game, and given a drop ball for impeding an opponent, regardless of the fact it was off the field of play.

In the same game Keiran Trippier put in a corner for Ben Mee to score which was clearly outside the quadrant. The game should have been stopped immediately and the ball replaced.

Next week, me and my colleagues from youaretheref.com are bringing a delegation of elite match officials over from Nigeria to do some training and take in a couple of games at Sheffield United and hopefully Stoke.

I just hope they don’t go away wondering what has happened to the standards of refereeing in the English game.

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I HAD to laugh when I read about rugby referee Nigel Owens cutting down a pair of scrapping players to size with a witty one-liner.

Apparently two players were getting to grips with each other, and he said: “If you want a cwtch (Welsh for cuddle) do it in your own time.”

Football referees aren’t fitted with TV mics, so you don’t get to hear a lot of what is said, which is probably for the best because games would have to take place after the watershed.

But as a referee you give as good as you get, believe me.

Aside from the use of video technology – a long-time bug bear for me – I think there is something else we can take from rugby.

The sport’s public school background generally means players are more respectful towards officials but I think that is changing, the more money comes into the game.

I wonder whether the sin bin could work in football?

It would be a difficult one to administer and I don’t know whether I’d go down the route of having three separate cards, but perhaps for some offences a 10-minute sit down would work.

Let’s take Sunderland and Liverpool last week, for example. I didn’t think Liam Bridcutt should have been given a second yellow, it was a cheap foul and I’d have just given the free kick and got on with it.

But Fabio Borini gets cautioned for denying a restart then does exactly the same thing again, but gets nothing.

You don’t want to issue dismissals for daft things like that – but maybe this is where 10 minutes sat in the dugout would help? It gives the opposing team an advantage but doesn’t bring with it the suspension issues further down the line.

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OUR Premier League officials are giving John Carver no help at all trying to land the Newcastle United head coach role.

A week after Remy Cabella’s goal got wrongly ruled out for offside at Leicester City, he got another dent in his managerial CV as Robert Madley failed to spot Jose Fonte’s handball against Southampton, a clear penalty in my eyes.

Handball is one of the easiest laws to interpret in the game and he was looking right at it when it happened. How he didn’t give a penalty, I’ll never know.

It was 2-1 to Southampton at that point and John Carver would have taken a point any day of the week.

All of a sudden, his chances of getting that job full time look slim because his side haven’t been taking points. And points make prizes, as they say.

Weirdly enough it was a decent weekend for refereeing in general, with only one or two hiccups.

But we should be talking about these kind of rudimentary mistakes once or twice every month, not every week. The standards are still not good enough.

Mark Clattenburg and Mike Dean are the two best referees in the top flight for my money, and despite being rated highly by Uefa, Mark hasn’t taken charge of a live game since September 21, Leicester v Manchester United.

Mike handled the Manchester City v Arsenal game very well, even if I’m not convinced about the penalty. It was tight but for me, Nacho Monreal initiates the contact and Vincent Kompany’s body movement just made the referee’s mind up.