mancityblues.com

Manchester City manager Mark Hughes has called for video evidence to be introduced to help referees make vital decisions after Sunday's controversial penalty award to Wigan which he feels cost City the game.

He was quoted as saying: "On occasions referees get the incidentals wrong and sometimes you scratch your head, but what they have to get is the key decisions right and the key decisions were not made correctly and that had a direct impact on the result I felt."
Hughes is amongst a number of Premiership managers who feel that video technology is the way forward. But are they right?

Opponents of the idea have traditionally claimed that it would slow the game down and result in long delays whilst referees waited for cricketing 'third umpire' type decisions.
But is this necessarily so?

Modern referees are already wearing headsets and appear to be constantly talking to someone during the course of a game, presumably the fourth official.
If the ref was wired up to a person sitting in front of a TV screen that official could give a snap judgement on an incident, giving expert advice on the incident based on his immediate gut reaction.

It would then be up to the referee whether he took this advice. A good ref might decide that the TV official had been in a better position to judge an incident and go with the advice. On the other hand if the ref felt he himself was better placed on that occasion then he could ignore the TV official's advice.

There would be no delays and the referee would still be in charge.
All it would amount to is to offer the referee a different opinion based on an alternative perspective. A bit like when he consults a linesman, only this would be much quicker and cut down the number of embarrassing mistakes that have marred the start of this season