Referees charity hit back at Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for 'betrayal of trust' over delegate's...

[ASFN Admin]

A referees’ charity has accused Ole Gunnar Solskjaer of a “betrayal of trust” and of suggesting that officials are “fair game” after he revealed that the match delegate admitted two mistakes in the 2-1 defeat against Sheffield United. Solskjaer described the Manchester United players as “a bunch of nice lads” and suggested that they could have “made more of a fuss” after two key incidents were not deemed by VAR to be clear and obvious mistakes. “Maybe we should have hung on to that or made them look at it before the game started again,” said Solskjaer. “So those are things we have to learn from and use as motivation or energy. You are not going to expect to get anything for free. “I’ve got the delegate’s report from the referee and the two decisions were wrong. They’ve admitted their goal should have been disallowed and our goal should have stood. That’s a big, big momentum changer for us.” Martin Cassidy, the chief executive of referees’ charity Ref Support UK, said that managers should not reveal the contents of a delegate’s report. “Revealing the public conversations or communications between match delegates and clubs in regard to a match official’s performance is a betrayal of trust and is a huge setback to building trust between match officials, clubs, managers and players,” said Cassidy. “The unwritten rule mentally that ‘what is said in the dressing, stays in the dressing room’ seems very shallow when the manager of one of the most famous clubs in the world disregards that unwritten rule when it comes to a referee.” Of Solskjaer’s comments over how United’s players might have reacted following the decisions, Cassidy said: “These sort of comments are another example that high profile managers think refs are fair game and the League Managers’ Association need to publish some form of protocol for addressing these irresponsible comments as they have gone for too long and are detrimental to the game. “We recently had similar with Neil Warnock adopting the same blame culture of the refs are to blame for mistakes that affect the game but players who miss penalties or six yard sitters are just unlucky and definitely not to blame.” Solskjaer did add that he had “no problem” with human error and that he did not want his players to exert “too much” pressure on referees. “We just have to leave it to the referees to make decisions,” he said. “There has been a narrative for too long about the decisions we have got for us.” VAR reviewed the incidents from the Sheffield United game at the time and felt there was no clear and obvious error because both were borderline calls. The match delegate is usually a former manager or player.

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