'They took me to the cleaners': Toxic Premier League match left former referee Howard Webb desperate to return home

Former referee Howard Webb had to referee some pretty heated matches during his career.

But now he has revealed that there was one. first division match that was so hard that it left him desperate to return home.

Webb retired from refereeing in 2014 when he took up a new position as director of the PGMOL.

It brought to an end his highly respected 11-year spell as a Premier League referee and his nine-year stint as a FIFA-listed international referee.

His CV included refereeing such notable matches as a World Cup final, a Champions League final and an FA Cup final.

But for Webb, some of his most demanding games came in the Premier League.

Join the cast of The overlap On the podcast, the 53-year-old spoke about his career as a referee and some of the toughest times he had faced.

And among them, he recalled a particular match in December 2004 between Everton and the then Premier League team Bolton Bums.

It was a very close match between the two teams that ended with a 3-2 comeback for Everton, who eventually won thanks to an own goal in the 85th minute.

But it was a game in which Webb believes he was not at his best.

“You have to go out into the field feeling like you can deal with tough characters,” he explained.

“I had a really difficult game in my second season: I was a referee between Everton and Bolton and some really important people took me to the cleaners. People like Duncan Ferguson, Tommy Gravesen, David Weir and Alan Stubbs.

5

5

“I started refereeing the game well in the first 20 minutes, but the atmosphere was really toxic in the stadium. Maybe I missed a few things, I don't know.

“I made a couple of fouls that could have been seen as soft. But after 20 minutes it really got to me; I started hiding after that.

“I started to let things go, my threshold for committing a foul became too high because every time I committed I received a lot of negative comments. I started bottling it a little bit at that point.

“I hate to say it, but I was a new, inexperienced Premier League referee with some really experienced players who could see I was green.

“Gary Speed ​​told me about 40 minutes in 'you're starting to let us down, you're not doing your job' and he was right. He was absolutely right. I wasn't doing the job I was there to do.

“I just wanted to go home, you know what I mean?”

It's a level of pressure that Webb believes referees still endure now, but noted that the harsh criticism they often face from fans can make the job unpleasant at times.

5

5

“There's a real lack of forgiveness in the game right now,” he said. “What really frustrates me a little bit is that any mistake you make is seen as something different.

“It is seen as an artificial decision that is made for different reasons. It really is not. A judgment is made in the moment. All of our referees want to do a good job.

“They don't want to be talked about. They want to go out and be enormously competent. They don't want to go out there and bother people. Sometimes they label situations incorrectly.

“It used to be 'right or wrong'; now it's 'right or corrupt' in too many cases. Which is just nonsense.”