Mike Dean and Anthony Taylor at fault for worst mistake of the season (Cucurella’s hair pull)

When asked what the worst refereeing mistake of the season was Graham Poll said “Sergio Romero pulling Marc Cucurella’s hair going unpunished. To me that was one of the most obvious red cards you’ll see. Anthony Taylor was refereeing and didn’t see it. Mike Dean was the VAR official and I know he’s since said I got it wrong and said I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough.”

Sepp Blatter was right, VAR is making things worse for referees

Graham Poll said on VAR, “This is where VAR goes wrong because we try to get everything 100% correct and be 100% consistent but football isn’t black and white. If I go back to when Sepp Blatter was in charge, he was totally against technology being introduced for this very reason. At the time I thought that was an outdated view but looking at it now VAR hasn’t taken away confusion or doubt or inconsistency and you could even argue that it’s made it worse. So the reason I’d have wanted to see this goal disallowed is that it’s the most obvious decision to give. If you did a straw poll of players, managers and referees I think most would say they want it disallowed.”

Agrees with Alan Shearer’s MOTD2 comments ‘bring back common sense refereeing’

Graham responded to Alan Shearers passionate plea on Sunday night’s MOTD2 to “bring back common sense refereeing”.

Graham Poll said, “What people want is consistency. The only way you can get that is by taking out the vagaries and being more dictatorial which is what FIFA have gradually done to the laws of the game over the last 20 years. They’ve taken out ‘in the opinion of the referee’. This is where it’s being spoiled in my view. We have to watch a reply for 90 seconds to decide whether he was offside by a millimetre or not for example. That’s ruining the game. When I used to do analysis for BT Sport I could give an answer in 5 seconds or say ‘that’s too close to call’.”

Premier League haven’t got VAR right, Webb has to bring in much needed changes

Graham Poll said, “I don’t think the Premier League have got it right yet on VAR. Looking back at the World Cup VAR incidents were resolved more quickly in general and it was more consistent. But in the Premier League it’s still not there yet. Whether that is because of the instructions Mike Riley is giving and him being cautious I don’t know but knowing his character that’s possible.

Howard Webb is coming in and he’s got masses of experience with VAR from his time in America as well as doing TV work with BT Sport. So he’s a very much more experienced guy in that field so I think we’ll see some much needed changes soon.”

Referees should give post-match interviews

Graham Poll said, “I think if referees came out and gave a fair and balanced post-match interview we’d see them more as human beings and we’d understand the difficulties they have with making decisions. I came out a few times and gave interviews on Sky, not to claim that I was always right but to give my side of how I saw an incident in the hope that people would hear my side and think OK fair enough. Because an incident can look totally different from two different angles. You have to accept that I might have got it wrong but from my angle it looked like a red card.”