Let’s start off this Monday’s blog thoughts by saying that if you are a person who is reaching out directly to anybody in the public eye and threatening them, their families, sending abuse from behind a keyboard, you probably need to take a long, hard, look at yourself. Online abuse is not ok, it’s not acceptable and doing it directed at any individual in football with the intention of them seeing it and be made to feel for their safety is just plain wrong.

We had it with Havertz and his wife a few week’s ago, now we’ve got it with Michael Oliver, who the PGMOL have announced has received online abuse following the Wolves v Arsenal game. It isn’t right. Every sane person knows that.

I think we have to tread carefully here that we don’t trivialise this, but I also think that it is interesting that the PGMOL have taken this incident to go in this direction. I don’t believe that this is the first controversial incident in which a referee has made a wrong call in the VAR and PGMOL era, but the very public announcement that was made yesterday is reserved only for a few occasions. That could be because the abuse has gone supernova in terms of what he received compared to other instances, but forgive me for thinking that there might also be alternate motives for being so public in this instance.

yesterday morning I watched Sky Sports News and Darren Lewis from the mirror was on and he was talking about how PGMOL has been taken aback by the condemnation of the decision, particularly by ex-players and pundits. It seems when controversial decisions usually come out there is a range of subjective opinions that can fall on either side of the supporting or chastising side of the fence. In this instance and with this decision it seems universal that people are falling on the side of the fence that suggests Oliver is wrong. PGMOLs first defence move was to announce that they back the decision and that of the VAR. That came out in the morning after the game. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect I think they wanted, so we got the statement at 7pm yesterday evening.

But here’s where we, as fans, get even more frustrated, because suddenly after 24 hours of almost universal agreement of an incorrect call being made, we have Sky Sports making some moves to try to back PGMOL in the shape of Jamie Redknapp – saying

“I’ve spoke to a couple of experts and former referees who have said that it was a bad tackle. They thought it was a red card and the player could have rolled his ankle and been out for a few weeks. They felt he was endangering an opponent, not just stopping the counter-attack.

“He does get him on the ankle, so it’s not a great challenge – let’s get that straight. But he absolutely doesn’t deserve that abuse. He might be the first to say he could have bought himself a little bit of time, but referees can make mistakes just like footballers can. That’s life.

He’s absolutely right that referees are human, he is right to condemn online abuse, as I think most of us do. But when we then get this change around of Sky Sports mouthpieces starting to turn around on a decision that 24 hours ago most said was never a red card, surely the world can see why ‘gaslighting’ gets called. I think it is fairly obvious at this stage that PGMOL uses PR to try to spin it’s narrative of it’s “good process” and Howard Webb is at the forefront of this. The changes he’s made to PGMOL since he arrived have not been to improve standards, but instead to find better ways to spin poor standards and this is an example of that. Again, I reiterate – Michael Oliver should not be subject to online abuse – but the way that this is being used feels to me like a deflection tactic because they are doubling down on an incorrect decision. The narrative has been changed and now what we are going to see this week is leading with the “online abuse is disgusting” deflection, rather than talking about what was clearly an incorrect call from a referee who has prior with one particular football club.

Let’s see what happens with the analysis of this incident now. If it is minimised because of the statement, then we all know what is happening.

Where this goes from here now I don’t know, because regardless of what has come before, it feels like Michael Oliver’s ability to referee Arsenal-related games is compromised. As I mentioned before there is already a body of evidence to suggest he has inherent biases against the club – whether intentional or or not – and now with this statement I’m not sure how he can referee Arsenal games for the foreseeable future. He will be feeling pretty angry at some of the abuse he has suffered from a small minority of idiots that pertain to be Arsenal ‘fans’ and the upshot of that is that even if he can compartmentalise those iditos as not part of the masses and general consensus, it is not going to help what we all believe to be potential unconscious biases.

As for the PGMOL – that organisation has long shown that it isn’t fit for purpose. It has shown an unwillingness to change and its gaslighting attempts prior to this weekend have become par for the course. It needs root and branch change but that won’t happen whilst they refuse to do anything other than keep the Old Boys Network together and to double down against criticism rather than look to work with bodies to improve the standards. Even the panel of people who will judge on MLS’ red card now feels like it could become a referendum on whether VAR and Oliver ‘was right’. And a bit like when a trial of a famous person goes to court and they struggle to have a jury who is impartial get together, because all of this has happened with the online abuse, does that impact the impartiality of those making the decision on whether it is an appeal or not? Because if you are suddenly looking at this situation and wondering if calling it in favour of it being overturned will result in more abuse from a minority of idiots online, who’s to say you don’t think twice about whether or not you do judge it fairly, given the context of the online abuse and decide to side in favour of what clearly is a wrong call?

I think I’m going to leave it at that for today. It’s a difficult enough conversation and besides, I think we’d all like to get back to talking about the football, so I’ll do that from tomorrow.

Catch you all then.