Consistently Inconsistent: Reviewing the Premier League Shirt-Pulling Debacle

If this weekend's football could be condensed down into one talking point, it would surely be the debate about refereeing 'consistency'. It's swirled in the stands, it's raged in our pubs, it's torn friend from friend and pitted father against son in a harrowing bout of internecine bloodletting. The debate currently centres on whether or not shirt pulling in the box is sort of allowed in football, or whether our match officials should crack down on such behaviour. Are referees going to give penalties for any old tug, grapple or wrestle in and around the goalmouth, or are they going to turn a blind eye to these unsightly but commonplace defensive tactics? We don't mind either way, as long as the refereeing community is unflinchingly consistent in a way which we all know to be fundamentally impossible.

When the various incidents of shirt pulling this weekend were discussed in depth on Match of the Day, the word 'consistency' was bandied about on several occasions. Everton were awarded a penalty when Ashley Williams had his shirt pulled by Phil Bardsley, but a similar incident between Jan Vertonghen and Joel Matip resulted in only a verbal ticking off for the former. Where was the consistency here? Why were the two referees being so inconsistent? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that these were two different human beings officiating two different matches, which were being played several hundred miles away from each other.

Here's Martin Keown on the new defending regulations in the Premier League… #MOTD2https://t.co/CfrL1Hyy1D
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) August 28, 2016

Here's the thing, see. The art of refereeing is fundamentally subjective, even if it takes direction from various basic guidelines and laws. There's also a huge margin of human error, and referees don't always see incidents in the same way as those watching on a television screen. Why aren't referees more consistent? Because, whether we like it or not, consistency is an unrealistic ideal.

To be honest, we could save ourselves a lot of effort and energy by dropping this whole 'consistency' lark. Referees will be inconsistent until the end of time, and perhaps that's part of what makes football so unpredictable, so frustrating and so ridiculously great. Inconsistency is also what makes referees human, in that all of us are painfully inconsistent. Most of us flip-flop between life decisions like distressed fish which have been washed up on dry land. Most of us can't manage to stop smoking, or be punctual, or go jogging in the morning, let alone referee Everton vs. Stoke with the flawless consistency of an infallible and omnipotent god.