Chelsea fans complaining about the refereeing performance during their highly entertaining but ultimately frustrating 2-2 draw with Tottenham have been told their annoyance is rightly justified.
Blues supporters were unhappy, alongside Thomas Tuchel who took a strong public line against Anthony Taylor, with the referee's decisions in the final half an hour of the game in particular. Along with Mike Dean on VAR, fans had vented their anger at Taylor's appointment for such a big game after the 43-year-old's previous matches involving Chelsea.
Taylor missed a foul on Kai Havertz in the build-up to Pierre-Emile Højbjerg's equaliser at 1-1 before VAR then allowed the goal to stand despite Richarlison seemingly stood in the path of the ball and in an offside position. The breaking point came when Cristian Romero pulled Marc Cucurella's hair during the corner before Harry Kane's headed equaliser. Despite Dean looking at the incident on VAR, no decision was given and Spurs would equalise with the resulting set-piece.
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Largely, Chelsea's moans have been backed up, though Graeme Souness took a differing line, and now former-Premier League referee Mark Halsey has come to Tuchel and Chelsea's defence.
He took to Twitter to voice his opinions on the hair, pull, saying, "a red card should have been shown for violent conduct."
Halsey has been vocal about the quality of refereeing in England, a subject that always rustles a lot of feathers. Before the season he admitted that this was going to be one of the worst pools of officials ever seen. He wrote, "they are all still learning their trade at the highest level so why were they not trusted in more games last season to prepare? For new refs, it's like a Championship club being promoted into the Prem, you face a sink or swim scenario.
"I believe the succession planning from [Mike] Riley has been poor and I hope that will improve when [Howard] Webb arrives because it is staggering to lose the experience of 1,570 Prem games from Dean, Atkinson, Moss and Friend in one summer.
"The Prem has gone from 22 refs to 19 and, of the remaining number, only 12 have taken charge of 100 or more matches. As a result the pressure on the rookies to step up and deliver will increase and leaves the league with the poorest set of officials in many a year."
Halsey, who stopped refereeing in 2012/13 due to illness, has been outspoken on the topic since his retirement, but paints a vivid picture of the current officiating scene. Even with his countenance Chelsea and their fans aren't likely to be much happier with the outcome of the game and had a petition to stop him refereeing future games with over 10,000 signatures in less than one hour.
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