Referee Anthony Taylor has pleaded with Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs fans to have more 'understanding' and 'empathy' to their and VAR's decision making despite recent backlash from Mikel Arteta and Frank Lampard respectively.
Refereeing decisions, especially if they go against your club, can often cause outrage on social media and recent examples for Arsenal and Everton have demonstrated just this.
In the Gunners' away clash recently against Wolves, Gabriel Martinelli was sent off in bizarre circumstances, to the confusion of Mikel Arteta who voiced his concerns about referees' decision making post-match.
"Very worrying. To be fair, it’s the first time I’ve seen a red card like this in 18 years that I’ve been in this league," Arteta said in his post-match press conference.
"I think you have to be pretty willing to give a red card in that situation. But still it happened. We know that playing with 10 men in this league you’re not gonna get points, enough points, the points that we want and we have to stop it.
"But to be fair it’s difficult to find more arguments and more ways to transmit that to the players. Everybody says it’s the most disciplined group they’ve seen in the last 15 years, but still we are getting red card for other things."
He then went on to add on refereeing decisions against his side throughout the campaign and whether he was going to hold talks with the PGMOL on this matter: "If you ask me if I’m happy with the decisions we’ve had this season, I’m not at all. But that’s a conversation I will have privately with the officials. We need explanations, we need explanations with what happened in VAR and I need explanations with what happened today.
"No but they are gonna happen soon."
Fast forward to the weekend that has just passed and a contentious Rodri handball decision that went against Lampard and Everton denied them what could have been a potentially invaluable point against Man City.
"The decision is incredible. It's an incredible decision. It loses us the opportunity to get what we deserved," he said in his post-match press conference via the Liverpool Echo.
"That's VAR's call, it's Chris Kavanagh. It's completely on Chris.
"I've spoken to the officials on the day and they know it's a penalty. So my question is whether it was offside in the build-up, it wasn't.
"So it's Chris Kavanagh. The referee couldn't see it on the pitch, he was on the other side. That's fine and one of the reasons we've got VAR, to have those secondary eyes.
"It wouldn't even need more than five seconds to see that was a penalty. Everybody saw it.
"He either should have told the referee to give it, or go and look to be clear. I can't understand why he didn't.
"We've lost a point potentially while we're fighting for our life by a professional who can't do his job right. And that's amazing.
"I'll wait until the statement or the apology or whatever they do when they give a statement about things that were wrong, but it will mean nothing.
"It's incompetence to get it wrong. Anyone who understands football at any level...Pep Guardiola will know, Man City fans will know, Everton fans will certainly know - that it was the most clear handball you can give.
"All the criteria - arm's out, below the sleeve - great from our point of view. I'm waiting for him to run to the screen and give it.
"It's incompetence at best. At worst, who knows."
In the wake of these two examples that have seen Michael Oliver and Chris Kavanagh slated on social media and by the two aforementioned managers, referee Anthony Taylor has come out in an interview with Jake Humphrey to try and reason with supporters alike.
Humphrey, who is well known for presenting Premier League football, asked Taylor: "How would you like us to view referees?"
A question to which received the answer of: "Just more understanding and more empathy.
"So, again, yes, mistakes are made and we're far from perfect.
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"But there's many other facets that contribute to a result of a football match and so, maybe before you start trying to blame one individual, maybe try and consider?
"Very difficult, I appreciate objectively after a team's loss, but consider the things that go into what's been decided and try and understand why something has been done."
Whether this message has done enough to satisfy disgruntled managers and supporters alike ahead of next week's round of Premier League fixtures remains to be seen but it's certainly refreshing to get an extra perspective from a person who has received an abundance of social media abuse when decisions they make unfortunately backfire on them.
