🆘 Another game, another appalling peformance from a PGMOL official, this time Sam Barrott with his second notably poor performance in 3 matches officiating Villa and second in five in total. If this is the standard of the newly trained then the game is well and trulyl doomed. The failure to do homework on the fouling antics of Will Hughes is inexcusable enough but at least there was a card after 3 bookable offences in 30’ but to award a corner that wasn’t, leading directly to Palace’s first goal, then disallowing a perfectly good strike by Morgan Rogers now appears to be just par for the course. That those incidents all happened in the first half alone underlines the absolutely terrible refereeing standards in the Premier League. This is genuinely like the Wild West days of the 1970s and 1980s but with no excuse given they are allowed two chances to get a decision correct and clearly CHOOSE not to. That however comes before any sort of reasonable review is made of a stonewall Villa penalty just after half time before 3 Palace goals are waved through without a single line drawn. That replays proved Villa’s concerns were correct just added to the pain.

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🆘 : An appalling performance from Barrott, denied a blatant penalty contrary to all the evidence in cahoots with VAR before allowing a foul to go unchecked for the opposition’s unlikely winner, that both incidents involved the same player confounded the concern. VAR provides a second chance, doubling down on dodgy decisions suggests someting sinister.

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Another novice referee for the second game in succession, Barrott officiates his first Villa game and arrives with no little controversy following his earlier Premier League appointments that have been variously described as “strange”, “lacking experience”, “couldn’t handle pressure” and “lacking consistency.”