Premier League referees have admitted that controversial decisions are being made purely to antagonise former colleague and now Nottingham Forest’s ‘referee analyst’, Mark Clattenburg. Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the organisation responsible for referees in England, said that their actions were meant as a laugh and were the equivalent of putting washing-up liquid in Mark’s whistle or spraying his shorts with Deep Heat.
The PGMOL admission follows formal accusations by Nottingham Forest initially implying bias and corruption, although those words have since been adjusted to suggest inconsistency and incompetence. A further statement from the club is expected shortly saying ‘hahahaha, good one you b*^*^%#s’.
Howard Webb, the current head of PGMOL, is well known for his sense of humour, as demonstrated by some of the penalties he awarded to Manchester United at Old Trafford during his refereeing career. It is also said that when Clattenburg took over from Webb as the head of refereeing in Saudi Arabia several years ago, he found a whoopee cushion on the chair and a mousetrap in one of the desk drawers.
As Clattenburg is the only former top-level referee employed by a Premier League club as a consultant, the PGMOL further confirmed that the wind-up has been confined to matches involving Nottingham Forest. All the other dodgy decisions and VAR controversies were primarily due to duff refereeing.
Clattenburg’s future with the club is uncertain following the PGMOL announcements, although Forest’s owner Evangelos Marinakis made no comment regarding Mark’s exact role with regard to iffy refereeing calls. Instead, Marinakas wished to point out that in his native Greece, he himself was cleared of all charges involving match fixing, bribery and attempting to influence the appointment of certain referees to certain games. It is absolutely understood that Mark Clattenburg is the only referee ever to have been paid by Marinakis.