Refereeing consultant... READY!
Mark Clattenburg: Nottingham Forest’s celebrity refereeing wonk
The football continues apace around Europe as the end of the season approaches. The world’s summer leagues are up and running. May must be on the way.
In non-league, we still have the dramatic matter of play-offs to polish off but the season is already over for many of us.
Regular readers of High Protein Beef Paste will know that I support Coventry Sphinx. We play in the Northern Premier League Division One Midlands – we’re at Step Four, or English football’s eighth tier, for the first time in our history – and I can write that in the present tense because we are staying up.
It’s another big chunk of history for a little club at its highest ever point. We survived on goal difference, albeit by a number of goals that meant we largely avoided any real prospect of relegation once we had a few wins on the board.
The last day was on Saturday and we ended it in 16th place, the topmost of four clubs who finished with 32 points. AFC Rushden & Diamonds went down with that total, though the prospect of a reprieve was already in the offing by the time I got home from our match.
What happens to the Diamonds in the shadow of Loughborough Dynamo’s sudden demise further up the division is a matter for them. They scrapped their way off the bottom and I’ve no doubt three or four more matches would have seen them safe when they looked dead and buried earlier in the season. I hope they stay up.
As for the Sphinx, I couldn’t be more proud of the team. Ours is a club that works within its means and making a step up was a tough challenge for everyone on and off the pitch.
It’s been a long season. I’m looking forward to sitting on my arse on Saturday and doing nothing. But it’s been real.
Refereeing consultant… READY!
The BBC’s reboot of Gladiators is a lot of fun, if you're that way inclined. There's a frustrating lack of variety in the events, the contenders are disgustingly comfortable on camera, and the number of people involved who share management is barely concealed, but there's plenty to like.
Commentator Guy Mowbray seems to be embracing the spectacle in its intended spirit and the new generation of Gladiators is an unexpectedly screenworthy bunch.
Legend (bodybuilder and powerlifter Matt Morsia) is a natural entertainer and the best kind of heel. Fury (rugby player Jodie Ounsley, who retired from the sport soon after the first season of Gladiators aired) is hard as nails. If Fury is the best reason to tune in – and she is – then Mark Clattenburg's turn as the referee is a compelling reason to turn off.
It will come as no surprise to Premier League supporters that Clattenburg is a smug and unlikeable presence, a wooden performer and an all-round entertainment drain. Yet there he is, visibly holding on for dear life as the apparatus for The Edge is hoisted high into the rafters of the arena, a fully fledged celebrity ref.
It would be easy to argue that Clattenburg’s endless incendiary comments about his time as a football referee, sketchy history with agencies, dismal television career and willingness to work in certain places with certain issues might be indicative of greed or a lack of integrity.
Only the man himself can know his motivations but these are perceived characteristics that have come under scrutiny in light of The Clattenburg Show's latest spin-off as an in-house refereeing consultant at Nottingham Forest.
There's something about Clattenburg that gives everything he does a distinct sense of gimmickry. This newly created role has that too, and was criticised as such long before Forest's infamous tweet attacking the refereeing fraternity for not awarding them some penalties in a football match.
Clattenburg's involvement or otherwise in the identification of VAR Stuart Attwell as a supporter of a relegation battle rival and the subsequent strongly but stupidly worded statement has been speculated and reported upon. Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville seemed to think he was where the buck should stop.
But the public perception of Clattenburg – and indeed of Nottingham Forest’s owner – clouds an innovation that's probably bad for football, possibly beneficial to clubs, and fascinating either way.
Premier League football is hyper-competitive. It's an environment where winning at any and all costs has become the accepted aim and the only thing bigger than the spoils of victory is the cost of failure. Elite sport demands an elite mindset. We live in the age of marginal gains – whatever it takes, no matter how small, to get any kind of advantage.
Football has generally been a slow mover and its innovations are met with resistance, criticism, skepticism, or all three.
Liverpool tapped specialist throw-in coach Thomas Grønnemark in 2018. The reaction was less than approving, but in a league where the top teams are richer than God it was an attempt to find one of the many little wins it takes to achieve success.
Austin MacPhee is a more rounded coach in terms of his qualifications and work history, but has been a specialist set piece coach for both Aston Villa and Scotland since 2021.
He's spanned multiple Villa managers for a reason. Their defensive set pieces need some work but their abilities with a dead ball at the other end have been inventive and productive despite the puzzlement of pundits like the risible Danny Murphy.
In the early nineties, Graham Taylor was filmed extolling the virtues of “restarts” to his England squad. Taylor wore his tactical influences on his sleeve but he was right about set pieces. It might be even more true now than it was then, and football has evolved in the meantime.
Before MacPhee and Grønnemark there were nutritionists, sports psychologists, player liaison officers, strength and conditioning coaches and more. It's all in the quest for competitive advantage.
It might leave a strange taste in the mouth but hiring a refereeing consultant isn't so different. Officiating has a material impact on the outcome of football matches, and therefore on a club’s success or failure over the course of a season.
When laws change, interpretations shift or directives are communicated to clubs in pre-season – and this is not a rare occurrence – it creates new challenges for those clubs in terms of how they play and the tactics they deploy. The refereeing consultant merely extends the idea of competitive gains beyond the training field and football pitch and into the management offices.
For all that the appointment of a refereeing consultant is necessarily about either maximising advantage or, subsequently, minimising disadvantage, it is a role that has to come with responsibility outwith the hiring club. Refereeing specialists in football clubs must also be expected to also serve both the game and its match officials.
Its genesis has the stink of snide on it but the refereeing consultant doesn't have to be a negative innovation. With a holistic understanding of the job description they would also be expected to inform and educate internally about laws and directives and interpretations, not just seek devious ways around them.
The role of the football club refereeing consultant should be one of integrity as well as intelligence, which doesn't bring us back to The Ref With The Terrible Tattoos.
Clattenburg was in refereeing but not really of refereeing. He's long been more willing than most to stray beyond the norms of the profession, chattering away like an illusionist burning bridges with the Magic Circle.
He isn't that hypothetical holistic consultant. He's gamekeeper turned poacher, appointed almost specifically to sell out his former profession because Forest felt aggrieved.
Yet he might well prove a trailblazer. Clattenburg was the first, hired for presumably dishonourable reasons. He won't be the last. We can only hope those who follow in his footsteps do so in a way that better fulfils the positive potential of an undeniable intriguing position.
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“If every single challenge like this is a foul we won’t finish with 11 players in any game. These types of decisions are damaging the game.”
Mauricio Pochettino’s rectum speaks.
Salty beef extracts
Tinfoilhattingham Forest (Unexpected Delirium)
Gateshead Soup (Unexpected Delirium)
Kingstonian: The homeless club on the brink after Chelsea bought their stadium (i)
Can San Diego FC pull off their plan to be the Ajax of North America? (The Guardian)
Coventry’s defeat was the most scintillating and sickening football experience of my life (The Guardian)
Portuguesa and the Venezuelan Ultra Turned Kidnapper (Football Paradise)
Dessert
The New Balance Grey Days pack is perfectly pitched for a dismal end to April.
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