Howard Webb has called for more protection for referees after he was asked what new rule he'd like to see implemented in football. The former match official, who worked in the Premier League from 2003 to 2014, is now the chief refereeing officer for the Professional Game Match Officials Limited.
The 53-year-old appeared on The Overlap podcast alongside Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Ian Wright, Wayne Rooney and Jill Scott to discuss the ever-changing world of refereeing in the modern game. Speaking about the change he would like to see, Webb said: "In general terms, I mean, there's a real lack of forgiveness in the game at the moment. I mean it's like the thing that kind of really frustrates me a little bit is that any error that you make is seen as something different.
"It's seen as a contrived decision that's done for different reasons. It's really not, you make a judgment in the moment. All of our referees want to do a good job, they don't want to be spoken about, they want to go out there, be anonymously competent, they don't want to go there and upset people.
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"Sometimes they'll call situations wrongly, it's a sad sort of reflection really. It used to be correct or incorrect, now it's correct or corrupt in too many cases now - which is just nonsense really."
Jill Scott then pressed Webb on what his proposed rule change would be, which appeared to be centered around more safeguarding for referees. Neville then said: "You don't want the criticism to be as harsh as it is, and that's basically the angle that you're talking about is - basically be it the way officials are referred to as potentially corrupt?"
He added: "You think it's gone too far at times in the last 12 months?" to which the former Premier League official replied: "Yeah, I think there has been a creep over time, it has."
Webb also touched on the use of VAR in the Premier League, contesting that there has only been two obvious errors made by the system so far this season.
He said: "Straight away, I thought that would be an overturn, and it wasn’t. I was frustrated that we didn’t step in to rectify because it was clearly wrong in my opinion. We’ve been better at hitting the mark but that can change and we’re not going to get complacent, but it’s been better. For me, the biggest thing of all is that it’s been quicker.
"The average delay last season through VAR was 70 seconds per game and this year it’s 25 seconds. We have this independent panel which has got ex-players on it. They judge each decision each week, and according to the panel there have only been two VAR errors this season compared to 10 at the same time last year."
