Hodgson: Retrospective FA bans spell bleak future for refs

Roy Hodgson fears referees are getting “hung out to dry” now the FA is retrospectively punish players.

West Brom boss Hodgson will be without defender Gabriel Tamas for their weekend game at Swansea, after he got a three-match ban for elbowing James Vaughan in the win at Norwich -despite ref Mark Halsey missing the incident.

Sunderland’s Phil Bardsley has also been suspended for four games after TV evidence picked up his stamp on Chelsea’s Juan Mata.

Hodgson warned: “There is no doubt it is going to make the refereeing job harder and harder.

“It is hard enough to be a referee anyway. But now people are going to confront you with loads of things on video which went on in the game which you may or may not have seen.

“By all means do it, but don’t then hang the referee out to dry, because he might actually have had a very good 90 minutes of refereeing.

“He can still be accused though of not refereeing well based on an incident he probably didn’t have much chance of seeing.

“And it makes the job of assessors more powerful and raises questions sometimes about delegates and assessors being as neutral as we hope the referees are.

“I thought [Halsey] refereed the game very well at Norwich and it is very harsh that his performance is being questioned as a result of this incident.

“There is no way if he is doing his job and following the ball that he will have seen Gabby catch Vaughan with his elbow.

“The ball was actually way past and was being dealt with in an aerial dual.”

Hodgson accepts Tamas’ ban, but still insists the player did not intentionally mean to injure Vaughan, who needed hospital treatment.

He added: “It was a clumsy turn and did cause damage to the other player so I can’t be quite as sympathetic, even though I must say I thought he didn’t deliberately elbow Vaughan.

“It was a nasty clash and the severity of the clash affects people’s mindsets.

“But the only person who really knows whether it was a pure and utter accident or whether there was some intent is Gabriel Tamas himself.”