No game for Chris Kavanagh this weekend as disaster referee seemingly stood down by PGMOL after NUFC horror show
Although there has been no official announcement by the PGMOL (at the time of writing), it looks like Chris Kavanagh and his blind assistant have been given the weekend off this week.
Chris Kavanagh and his assistant, Nick Greenhalgh, aka Stevie Wonder, have not been given a Premier League game to preside over in the coming weekend's fixtures.
The pair made a series of huge errors in the game between Aston Villa and Newcastle United, missing blatant offsides, clear red cards and two huge penalty shouts.
With no VAR to back them up in the FA Cup fourth round, the officials were left to think for themselves, and that didn't go very well at all for Kavanagh and Greenhalgh.
PGMOL have given Chris Kavanagh the week off
The Premier League and the PGMOL have announced the officials for the coming weekend's fixtures on Monday, and there's no sign of Kavanagh's name after his high-profile gaffes on Saturday.
It wasn't just a one-off for Kavanagh either. He was forced to apologise to Sunderland for an error in their defeat to Liverpool.
We are hoping that the PGMOL will release some sort of statement around their decision and give us an idea of how long they are going to keep the pair sidelined.
Keep Kavanagh away from the game
Even with VAR behind him, we don't think Kavanagh should be anywhere near the top flight for a long time. He's clearly not fit to referee.
VAR is supposed to be a supplementary tool for referees, but it has become the referee, something that was promised wouldn't happen when it was introduced.
When it first came into the game, it was supposed to be there to catch clear and obvious errors, not re-referee the game, but these days it's involved in every little decision and does more harm than good, and Chris Kavanagh's showing on Saturday is proof just how much officials now rely on it being there to get them out of trouble instead of having the bottle to make decisions in the moment.
