Premier League has a crisis to fix after Andy Robertson lino incident

There we were fretting over the treatment of match officials by Premier League footballers and along comes assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis to turn the issue on its head. The flailing elbow to the throat of Liverpool full-back Andy Robertson by Hatzidakis at Anfield last Sunday represented a spectacular role reversal with a player on the receiving end from an official for once.

The nature of the incident left refereeing appointments body PGMOL with no choice but to stand Hatzidakis down while the FA investigates. If, as seems inevitable, he is charged and found guilty, he will have to be suspended. But it should be taken into account that it was Robertson who initiated the incident with the sort of aggressive close-quarters rant which has become so commonplace towards officials. 

If he didn’t actually make contact with the pugnacious lino – and the footage is unclear on this – he was as close as humanly possible to doing so. It is hard to get inside the assistant ref’s head over the volcanic reaction that followed but maybe it was one man saying on behalf of his profession: enough is enough.

After all the grief officials take from footballers week after week here, in one swinging arm, was the worm turning. The actions of Hatzidakis were indefensible but the Premier League’s players had something like this coming.

The constant badgering, whingeing and in the case of Aleksandar Mitrovic full-on physical intimidation is one of the league’s least appealing features. Robertson was doing what many others do week in, week out – attempting to bully the official; it was just Hatzidakis, on this occasion, wasn’t having it.

There must have been plenty of his colleagues who were privately cheering him on. Could this sort of response be just the start? Emboldened, might other officials up the ante? A boot to the backside for diving? A Chinese burn for backchat? Might PGMOL equip its members with tasers for a more forceful response to swarms of snarling players?

Has one lowly assistant set in train an uprising of the oppressed officiating classes? Whatever the temptation, football cannot have officials becoming lone vigilantes, unfortunately. That way anarchy lies. Self-discipline is just as important if not more so for a match official than a player. 

But it is hard not to have some sympathy with Hatzidakis, given the provocation he and his ilk face from players every week. The Mitrovic case was the most extreme example but it is not the only occasion that a player has grabbed an official this season. Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes did so with assistant referee Adam Nunn in the 7-0 defeat to Liverpool earlier this season.

It wasn’t a violent act and Fernandes escaped sanction but it should never have happened. Martin Cassidy, the chief executive of referees charity Ref Support UK, suggested this week creating a 2m exclusion zone around officials which players can only enter when invited to do so. A sort of spherical, mobile headmasters’ study.

Others favour a rugby-style system whereby only the captain is allowed to approach referees. One way or another, there has to be a reframing of the relationship. There is an officiating crisis in the sport in this country. 

Referee numbers have fallen like a stone over the past few years, a trend directly linked to the verbals – and worse – that have become part and parcel of the job at all levels. Hatzidakis did wrong – and he will pay a price – but he also inadvertently sent out a cry for help for officials countrywide.