Michael Oliver is a man who referees games of football so that the rest of us might enjoy watching them or make a handsome living from playing in them. Without a referee, as Jamie Carragher reminded Sky Sports viewers at the weekend, there is no game.
And yet today Michael Oliver is also a man whose family is under police protection at their home because he made an honest decision to send off a player for a cynical, dangerous studs-up foul on an opponent.
This is the stage we have reached now with the treatment of officials in this country. It is not just that they are routinely slandered on social media and accused by fans of being corrupt every time they make a decision that a manager or a player disagrees with.
It is a lot, lot worse than that. When Oliver woke up on Sunday morning, the day after he had sent off Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly for a challenge on Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Matt Doherty at Molineux, there was a police car in his street.
He and his partner, Laura, assumed that a misfortune had befallen a neighbour but when they spoke to one of the officers, they were told that the police were there to check on their safety.
There had been a death threat made against Oliver and his two-year-old daughter and even though the authorities thought it was probably a keyboard warrior, the Metropolitan Police had passed the issue on to Oliver’s local force because they could not be sure.
Michael Oliver and his family have been subjected to sickening death threats over the weekend
Oliver’s decision to send off Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly against Wolves caused controversy
It led to a furious reaction from Arsenal players, staff and supporters in the aftermath
There were other threats in the wake of the Lewis-Skelly sending off, too. You know the kind: messages from fans who said they knew where he lived and that they were going to brick all his windows. Enough for the police to make regular patrols past his house.
Enough, too, for the Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the referee organisation, to put out a strongly worded statement in the aftermath of the torrent of foul abuse aimed at Oliver.
‘We are appalled by the threats and abuse directed at Michael Oliver following the Wolverhampton Wanderers v Arsenal fixture,’ the statement said. ‘No official should be subject to any form of abuse, let alone the abhorrent attacks aimed at Michael and his family over the past 24 hours.’
This is not the first time stuff like this has happened to Oliver, of course. Far from it. But it is getting worse. And more frequent. Three weeks ago, someone said they were going to blow up his car with his family inside it.
That was after he had awarded a penalty to Liverpool when Manchester United’s Matthijs de Ligt had handled the ball in the area during the teams’ 2-2 draw at Anfield earlier this month. It was not revealed at the time but that threat, too, prompted a police investigation.
This is where we are: handball decisions, even ones that brook little dissent, equal car bomb threats these days.
The atmosphere around top flight matches now, particularly on social media and in the broadcast media where the hunger for viral clips and comments is increasingly rampant, has grown more and more febrile and referees are easy meat. When Oliver sent off Lewis-Skelly, he was fed through the mincer.
‘I have never seen that in my life,’ Pat Nevin said on BBC Radio 5 Live, leading a chorus of pundits and presenters who professed themselves horrified, astounded, astonished, stunned, baffled and generally traumatised and by the sheer egregiousness of Oliver’s error.
There was a disgusting death threat made against Oliver and his two-year-old daughter, while others said they knew where he lived and that they were going to brick all of his windows
The collective hysteria and questions surrounding Oliver’s integrity are laughable and sinister
Lewis-Skelly’s tackle on Doherty was pragmatic but it was also a studs-up challenge on an opponent who was moving at speed that may have put him out of the game for some time
The collective hysteria of the reaction was actually rather strange. Question referees’ decisions by all means. We all do it. But the number of conspiracy theories that abound about Oliver and his colleagues now are laughable as well as sinister.
And so, in this instance, the general impulse was to hound the referee, and the VAR, Darren England, rather than to offer any criticism at all of Lewis-Skelly for a challenge that was really rather unpleasant.
Lewis-Skelly is a young man and a fantastic player. His performance against Tottenham in the North London derby the week before last spoke of a player who is destined for the very top and who has character and guts and drive and wonderful match intelligence.
But it was strange how many observers rushed to defend him. Some talked about game management and taking one for the team and how the foul on Doherty was just a harmless trip.
The truth is that now the rush to judgment has subsided, some are revising their opinion. Lewis-Skelly’s tackle on Doherty was a pragmatic play but it was also a studs-up challenge on an opponent who was moving at speed that could have put Doherty out of the game for some time.
One other thing: in the still pictures that show Lewis-Skelly’s studs crunching into Doherty’s leg, just above the ankle, the ball isn’t even in the frame. I’m going to repeat it: Lewis-Skelly is a wonderful talent and a great prospect but let’s not defend him for that tackle because that way, madness lies.
My own view is similar to that of Jamie Redknapp, who, while launching an impassioned defence of Oliver on Sky, said he felt Lewis-Skelly’s challenge was ‘an amber’. He’s right. It was somewhere in that area between a yellow and a red card.
I expected to see Oliver brandish a yellow but when you look at the replays, it appears more like a red. Whichever side you come down on, it is a long, long way from being the catastrophically wrong decision so many portrayed it as.
So maybe we should ask ourselves why there is an increasing obsession with blaming referees for everything. The pressure on managers has something to do with it, the need to blame someone else, the inability to take responsibility for a defeat oneself, the taboo of ever criticising your own player, the desire of some broadcasters to enhance their fan-first-journalist-second credentials by joining the mob.
Whatever the explanation, the outcome is that a referee and his terrified young family are sitting in a house, a police car patrolling outside, wondering where the next threat to kill them is going to come from, wondering how the hell doing a job that allows us to enjoy a beautiful game ever came to this.
The fact a referee and his terrified young family are sitting in a house, a police car patrolling outside, wondering where the next threat to kill them is going to come from is disgraceful
Brotherhood remains in football
My favourite bit of broadcasting over the weekend was BBC 5live’s commentary of the Aston Villa-West Ham match at Villa Park and particularly the passage where John Murray and Stephen Warnock were commentating on the aftermath of Tyrone Mings’ collision with Mohammed Kudus.
Mings, a wonderful player and a popular, engaging man who has fought his way back from a serious knee injury, was clearly hurt and the concern in Warnock’s voice and his pleading with the Villa bench to take Mings off as a precaution was a poignant reminder both of the brotherhood that exists between players and ex-players and of the precariousness of a player’s career.
Tyrone Mings was forced off for Aston Villa months after returning from a serious knee injury
Australian Open left me disappointed
I watched the final few points of the Australian Open men’s singles final at the weekend. All I felt was a brief thud of disappointment when Jannik Sinner hit the winning cross-court pass to beat Alexander Zverev and claim the title.
The win was met, predictably, with collective amnesia about the fact that the future of the men’s game appears to be in the hands of a player whose recent anti-doping violations make him a strange kind of hero indeed.
