The Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), and since made a Limited Liability Company (PGMOL, or Professional Game Match Officials Limited), was formed when English association football referees turned professional in 2001, specifically to provide match officials for all games played in the Premier League in England. The Board consists of the three governing bodies' Chief Executives and Referees Managers in addition to The FA's Head of Refereeing. The organisation is headed by Mike Riley.
The board are tasked with the responsibility of developing excellence in officiating in the English game at the professional level. The General Manager and his team of managers and coaches is responsible for the training, development and monitoring of referees.
Mike Riley also decides which referees will officiate at Premier League matches while David Allison decides Football League matches and consults with the Football Association over the FA Cup.
The PGMOB replaced the referees' National Review Board. Former FIFA referee Roger Milford commented at the time: "I am sure this will mean more consistency from the officials on points of law which cause controversy."[1]
Contents |
ProZone
The top-flight referees are continually monitored at games and attend fortnightly meetings in which, amongst other matters, their performances, via the use of ProZone, are evaluated. Some interesting data regarding referees performance is also being produced by Untold Arsenal and a team of referees[3].
Fitness
The PGMOL employs Simon Breivik as Head of Sports Science and he is supported by Adam Kerr. Both Sports Scientists design training programmes, monitor the referees' training data and fitness test the match officials on a regular basis.
They provide a varied set of training sessions at variable intensities to ensure that match officials are at peak fitness to officiate at the top level of the game.
All training sessions and games are carefully scrutinised thanks to the aid of Polar Heart Monitors.
Sponsorship
The PGMOL has changed its sponsorship for the 2010/11 season from Air Asia to its parent group, 'Tune Group'. [2]
Coincidentally, the founder of Tune Group [Tony Fernandes] is also the Chairman of Queens Park Rangers football club who entered the Premier League from the 2011/2012 season.
Controversy
Since 2010 the neutrality and competence of PGMOL has been consistently challenged by a group of referees from outside PGMOL who have challenged the statistics that PGMOL have provided about their own work, and the reliability of the referees themselves. This led to the group of referees themselves reviewing 40% of all Premier League matches during the 2011/12 season and assessing the referees.
Numerous errors were cited, and the common assumption that errors will even out in the end was challenged in a regular report published on the web site Untold Arsenal [www.blog.emiratesstadium.info] Although the site itself was started by Arsenal supporters the referees who undertake the reviews have persistently claimed that they are neutral in their reviewing. Since the 2012/2013 season, the referee review activities have been moved to a new website [1] to start the process of removing any suggested bias whilst Arsenal reports still continue to be published on the original site.
During the course of the 2011/12 season the PGMOL took down its previous public web site and replaced it with a website to which entry was restricted to those with PGMOL allocated passwords.
At the end of the 2011/12 season Untold Arsenal began to summarise its findings in "Ref Review" [2]
An earlier attempt by the editorial team of the web site to examine how different football associations across Europe monitor referees and the standards of accuracy that are demanded was stopped when none of the associations would agree to complete the questionnaire that they were sent.
References
- ^ "Football referees turn professional". BBC Sport. 13 June 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/1386841.stm. Retrieved 7 November 2006.
- ^ http://www.refworld.com/information/7/article/5/0
3. http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/referees
4. http://www.refereedecisions.co.uk