[Baggiebob(BBB)]

It could be said that if a ref loves football, and his favourite team is in the same league, and are one of the teams to vie for promotion - as Shef Wed -are - then there is no way he can't be influenced by that.
 
So do ref's get asked what team(teams) they support before refing a match? Just asking.

[Jacko The Flopsy Piglet]

I can't say I've noticed a decline in refereeing standards over the years. They've always been inconsistent, because they're human. They make no more mistakes than the players in any given match, probably less. I know supporters like to moan about ref's but I tend to categorise it as having a losing mentality when we blame the ref every time we think they've cost our team a game or a goal or whatever. I know, I've been guilty of it myself but in the cold light of day, the best team always wins. Everything else is just hearsay and rumour!

[St Charles Owl]

It could be said that if a ref loves football, and his favourite team is in the same league, and are one of the teams to vie for promotion - as Shef Wed -are - then there is no way he can't be influenced by that.
 
So do ref's get asked what team(teams) they support before refing a match? Just asking.

I believe all refs have to declare which teams they either have a connection to or they support. But I also believe most of them are professional enough to put this perceived bias to one side.

Refs aren't imo crooked, they are crap some times and make mistakes every game, but they are ultimately human and those mistakes will never go away. What has changed over the last 10 years is the fact that we are now able to look at all the games on tv frame by frame after the game has finished and see if a player was offside or not. I was watching the game live and I never for one minute thought anyone was offside, and none of us posted anything suggesting that either. In the past this would have been simply a debate down the pub with no definitive answer, just a bunch of opinions, now its been looked at by everyone multiple times so the evidence is clear. This is a wrong decision that we have seen hundreds of times down the years, now we also get to actually see that its wrong!!

I also don't know what the answer is, video replay will sort some of these errors but even then you see decisions that the pundits have watched 10 times and they still can't all agree. Offside though is usually fairly clear with the first replay look, so have a guy watching the feed and he would be able to confirm the decision or have it reversed in literally 10 seconds.