5 Premier League Referees That Were Suspended

Key Takeaways

• The recent controversy surrounding Premier League official David Coote has brought a spotlight onto the PGMOL.

• Coote, however, is far from the first referee to have ever been suspended from officiating matches.

• Mark Clattenburg, perhaps one of the most famous referees in England, was suspended for almost a year.

Referees are a big talking point of English football at the time of writing, in no small part due to the recent video of David Coote talking negatively about Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp emerging. Coote has been suspended due to this, with many calling into question the integrity and quality of Premier League referees.

It is scarcely a scandal that the PGMOL would have wanted anyway, let alone one coming after several years of the organisation being routinely questioned by fans and pundits alike since the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, into the game.

Coote's suspension is certainly the first significant incident of such an occurrence happening in quite a while. He is not, however, the only Premier League referee to have been suspended. With that being considered, just who are the other referees to have received such punishment?

David Coote is under investigation by PGMOL and the FA after a video leaked showing him using foul language against Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool.

5 David Coote

The topic of most major headlines currently, David Coote was immediately suspended by the PGMOL after a video of him making derogatory remarks towards Liverpool and former manager Jurgen Klopp, presumed to be dated around three or four years ago, were released.

Already facing an investigation from the PGMOL, Coote's situation worsened when it was announced that the Football Association had also been made aware of what he had said, given that Coote's reference to Klopp's German nationality could lead to an aggravated rules breach.

It remains to be seen what Coote's fate as a referee will be, but given that there have been more videos and controversies to come out with his name attached, it is hard to imagine that Coote, who has spent six years as a Premier League referee, will officiate a game anytime soon.

4 Mark Clattenburg

Mark Clattenburg is probably one of the better known referees of his generation. He made his refereeing debut in 1993, working for the Northern League and Football Conference between 1993 and 1999 before joining the Football League just shy of the millennium's turn. After four years, he joined the Premier League, with whom he worked for 13 years.

In that time, Clattenburg took charge of almost 300 Premier League matches and can count some stellar games in his resume, such as the 2012 Olympics final and the FA Cup final, Champions League final and Euros final all in 2016.

By 2008, Clattenburg had risen to a position of being one of the country's leading referees, which made it all the more surprising when it was announced he had been suspended just days before the 2008 Community Shield after reports of alleged debts had been raised and sent for an investigation.

The investigation lasted for months, with Clattenburg in fact being stripped of his elite standing as a referee in January 2009. Just one month later, however, after appeals from Clattenburg, the PGMOL concluded that an eight-month ban, backdated to the beginning of his initial suspension, would be a sufficient enough punishment. He returned to refereeing on the final day of that Premier League season, taking charge of a game between Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers.

Ex-Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg admitted Craig Bellamy was a 'nightmare', while he also wasn't very complimentary of Roy Keane and Pepe.

3 Andy D'Urso

Having now retired, Andy D'Urso first earned promotion to the Football League in 1994 while in his early 30s. After five years within the three divisions below the English top flight, he earned a promotion to the Premier League in 1999, being first nominated for FIFA status as a referee just two years after his ascent.

D'Urso's career was not without its noticeable moments. He was the man in charge when Middlesbrough were awarded a penalty at Old Trafford in 2000, which saw six Manchester United players surround him to protest the decision that he had made, something that some players involved have since voiced their regret over.

His time as a referee also saw its fair share of controversy. D'Urso took charge of a game between Blackburn Rovers and Southampton in 2004, during which he showed Blackburn captain Barry Ferguson two yellow cards but failed to send him off, an error that D'Urso acknowledged in his post-match report.

As a result of failing to apply the game's laws, D'Urso was handed a 28-day suspension, which he served without issue. The referee returned to action after his ban, noting that he had made a mistake and had worked on making improvements to ensure nothing similar would happen in the future. Though he successfully argued against being relegated from the Select Group of referees, D'Urso did not officiate a single match within the Premier League after the 2005/06 season.

2 Rob Harris

Rob Harris enjoyed a long career in football, beginning as a referee in 1975 and quickly rising through the ranks of his local footballing divisions. Similar promotions followed Harris throughout the 1980s and in 1988, he was appointed as a linesman for the Football League.

By 1992, Harris had become one of the first-ever FIFA assistant referees, working in the finals of the 1991/92 FA Cup between Liverpool and Sunderland and assisting the match between AC Milan and Barcelona in the 1994 European Cup final. All the while, Harris was further establishing himself in the Football League, with the number of games he took charge of steadily increasing.

In 1998, Harris was promoted to the Premier League, but would only serve for three seasons that were marred with controversy. In a clash between West Ham United and Leeds United, he sent off three West Ham players and was close to being attacked by Hammers fans after the game. Just over a year later, he showed a second yellow card to Lee Hendrie of Aston Villa, only showing the red card after numerous players reminded him that it was Hendrie's second booking.

Worst of all, though, was when Harris took charge of an FA Cup tie between Tranmere Rovers and Sunderland. He dismissed Clint Hill and as he was leaving the pitch, Tranmere made a substitution. In the following confusion, no player was withdrawn from the match, meaning that Tranmere finished the game with 11 men rather than 10. Such a blatant breaking of the rules led to Harris being handed a month-long suspension. Harris would eventually retire from the game in 2005 after spending two seasons refereeing the Football Conference, as it was then known.

1 Matt Messias

Matt Messias took up refereeing as a teenager in the early 1980s, rising through the ranks until he was appointed to the Football League in 1991 as an assistant referee. He spent just a season within the divisions before rising to the top flight, once again as an assistant, for the first Premier League campaign.

Messias spent four years as an assistant referee in the Premier League before dropping back to the Football League in 1996 to become a referee. He would serve this role for four years before his return to the Premier League at the turn of the millennium, where he would spend six years before announcing his retirement in 2006, having by that point also spent three years as a FIFA-listed referee.

In 2005, Messias was placed in charge of the Premier League game between Portsmouth and Newcastle United, though the game hardly went as he would have predicted before kick-off. There was a clash between players Stephen Carr and Yakubu, with the latter being shown a yellow card for preventing a quick free-kick from being taken.

Carr, angered by this, was cautioned after involving himself in a row with the striker. Messias, to ensure Yakubu knew he had been booked, showed him the yellow card once more, though this should have meant that the attacker was dismissed for having been given two yellow cards. As such, Messias had "less than proficiently" applied the laws of the game and was suspended for two weeks as a result.