MARK HALSEY: Is 'fussy' refereeing ruining football?

No-one wants to see our officials become too liberal and we saw in the Bolton v Brighton game that sometimes a foul has to be punished with a straight red card regardless of how much intent is involved.

What is really becoming a problem, however, is the number of times we see a player having to leave the field for a second caution, simply because the referee has failed to set his tolerance levels correctly.

And as a result it annoys me to see a referee criticised when he attempts to manage a game and show a degree of tolerance within the laws of the game.

Too many players have been saddled with one-game suspensions because of minor things that need not have built up.

We saw it with Younes Kaboul in the Bournemouth v Sunderland game a couple of weeks ago, and then with Liverpool’s Phillip Coutinho against West Ham at the end of last month. In both incidents, you are screaming at the television “just award a free kick and get on with it!”

Some referees are giving themselves nowhere to go and when a player gets sent off it affects the game as a spectacle, which is sad to see.

There is a difference between a careless challenge, which is punishable with a free kick, or a reckless one that can earn a caution. Yes, you sometimes have to take into consideration persistent infringement but it is when a referee reaches too quickly for his pocket that problems start to occur.

The media don’t help. On Saturday I heard the commentators describe Manchester City’s Martin Demichelis as a “lucky boy” after he avoided a second caution for a foul on Erik Lamela. What rubbish!

Mark Clattenburg had already had to issue a yellow card for dissent, which might well have stemmed from some of the very poor offside decisions that had gone against the defender’s team, but had no reason to issue a second yellow.

The foul did not deny Tottenham a promising attack – he was going nowhere – so have a word with him, and let play go on.

Too many referees are being fussy and that, as I’ve mentioned in the past, stems from deficiencies in the coaching they are receiving and the criteria they are being judged against.

There has to be a happy medium. You can clearly see a referee who manages a game on natural ability and those who are manufactured. And it is the more natural officials who tend to produce better games of football for everyone to enjoy.

Perhaps the pundits should take a mandatory refereeing course before they are allowed to comment?

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I FEAR some referees are paying for falling standards on the touchline.

Time and time again we are seeing offside decisions hit the headlines – with three in a single game between Tottenham and Manchester City this weekend.

But while the two men patrolling the line last weekend, Simon Beck and Jake Colin, have been left off the appointments rota this weekend, the man they landed in hot water, Mark Clattenburg has suffered.

He has been put in charge of a fairly low-key game, Norwich v Leicester, but more importantly the errors in that game come at a time when decisions are being made about who to put forward for next summer’s European Championships.

Although there is a possibility that UEFA will select two English referees to go to France, the likelihood is that it will come down to Mark and Martin Atkinson.

Martin will be in charge of the Merseyside derby on Sunday – so clearly he will be seen by people around the world.

Mark was obliged to follow his assistant’s decisions at White Hart Lane, even though he may have sensed by the reaction of some that the calls were the wrong ones.

Beck has made three big errors in as many weeks, going back to Juan Mata’s involvement in Anthony Martial’s goal against Southampton and I fear it may affect Clattenburg's team’s chances of making a major tournament. I understand he also made an error in an international game between Sweden and Russia.

Saturday’s game saw three errors, although I’ll accept that the first one for Kevin De Bruyne’s goal was marginal and a very tough one for Jake Colin to spot.

For the second goal, Beck was so far out of position he failed to spot that Kyle Walker was offside. He wasn’t even in line with the second-nearest defender and an assistant of his experience and quality should be doing much, much better than that.

The third error, involving Colin, occurred when Harry Kane made it 3-1 to Spurs.

The England striker was in an offside position when the free-kick was taken and hit the bar, so when he became involved – and active – he should automatically have been flagged.

Those two major errors could prove very costly in the long run and I just hope Colin and Beck use their weekend off to sharpen up mentally and make sure they bounce back to form.

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I EXPECT to see a few familiar faces when the Championship gets its own set of full-time referees next season.

It is a strong possibility that some of the referees that are currently in Select Group One and taking charge of Premier League games, will spend the majority of their time in the second tier once the new changes are implemented in 2016.

Contracts with the PGMOL run from year to year, so there may be a few nervous people at the moment wondering just which level they will be offered next season.

Personally, I think some of the best young officials in the development group might make the step up – leaving two or three of the more experienced heads to drop down into the second group.

I’d expect that to be the case for a number of established top-flight referees after the shake-up. Most will referee in the Football League on a Saturday and then act as a fourth official on a Sunday or a Monday in the Premier League.

I don’t expect the move to full-time refereeing to be much of a problem for the ones who are currently part-time, though.

Those who are selected for Select Group Two should still be able to hold down a regular job as it basically entails a few hours of training a day.

Many refs manage to do both – including Neil Swarbrick, who works in Lancashire at British Aerospace, Roger East, who runs a family wood business, and Jon Moss, who still does a bit of teaching.

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BY the time I’d finished my column yesterday the Football Association hadn’t announced their decision on Jamie Murphy’s appeal against his red card against Bolton.

I’m sticking to my guns, though, and I can't see them dropping the charge.

I have a bit of sympathy for the Brighton winger – there was a slip and I’m sure it wasn’t intentional – but by the letter of the law intent does not come into it.

There is no option to reduce the suspension to one or two games it was either all three or nothing. In order to do that the panel must decide that there was a clear and obvious error from the official.

I think that Mark Haywood issued the red card because he felt Murphy’s challenge was reckless and endangered the safety of Neil Danns.

As soon as I saw the incident I said “red card” and no replay I have seen since has changed my mind.

You can dispute motives all day long, point out that he hasn’t been red-carded before in his career, but it simply comes down to whether the player was in control of his actions, if it was reckless and whether it brought his opponent into danger. They are the only criteria that the panel are able to judge on because they are the laws of the game.