Mark Clattenburg calls for major Premier League officiating change after Everton v Liverpool

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Former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg believes the debate over injury time in the Premier League should be re-opened after an ‘unfair’ decision in the Merseyside derby this weekend.

Liverpool beat Everton at Anfield on Saturday, with Everton given just three minutes of injury time to try and get an equaliser that did not come.

Arne Slot’s side have used injury time to score winners in their first five games of the season, but benefitted from a shorter amount of added time to seal the win over Everton.

And Clattenburg has told the Beyond the Back Four podcast that he would be ‘all for’ a more independent method of timekeeping when it comes to calculating injury time.

Mark Clattenburg says ‘external timekeepers’ should decide injury time in the Premier League

Clattenburg told Beyond the Back Four: “it goes back to the old argument – should added time come out of the referee’s hands? Because we say 30 seconds for a substitute, 30 seconds for a yellow card, and then you add injuries.

“So if the injuries are two minutes, it’s two minutes. If you put all that down on paper, you could have seven or eight minutes – like we saw in the World Cup previously, where we were playing 12 or 13 minutes of injury time.

“I’m not sure that’s what the players want, because they’re already playing extra time and getting injuries. Do we really want to get back to an approach where referees lose control of the timekeeping and it’s done by an external person?

“I’m all for it, but the purists and traditionalists will always say, ‘No, no, no, it should always be in the referee’s hands.’

“But there are so many complaints about added-on time, especially if you’re losing 2-1. People want all of the time added on correctly. And, you know, some games we saw yesterday had eight minutes of injury time, while in the Merseyside derby there was only three, and people say that’s not fair.”

Graeme Bailey says injury time in Premier League ‘is not a massive issue’ after Mark Clattenburg suggestion

Also on Beyond the Back Four was TBR Football Chief Correspondent Graeme Bailey, who offered a counterpoint to Mark Clattenburg’s suggestion that referees no longer calculate injury time in Premier League games.

“I don’t think there needs to be [a change]… you know, they’re only human,” Bailey said. “You do wonder sometimes with the 30 seconds for substitutes, where it all adds up in time, but it is what it is. I don’t think it’s a massive issue.

“The managers are always going to have an issue with it and always find something to be disappointed by.

“And with David Moyes, he often finds something to talk about after the match – it’s not really about the referee.”