Wanna get mad? OK, I mean even madder than you already are with Tottenham facing relegation, employing a sexual assault apologist, and Johan Lange still employed. Well I have something for you! Remember that incident where Sunderland striker Brian Brobbey, already on a yellow card, shoved Cuti Romero into Antonin Kinsky, injuring both Spurs players and leading to Cuti being out for the rest of the season? And remember how match official Rob Jones declined to send Brobbey off because of… uh, reasons?
Remember that? Huh? Remember? That was (not) awesome.
Well the Premier League Key Match Incidents (KMI) panel just ruled that Jones, as 100% of Spurs fans could tell you at the time, screwed the pooch.
The KMI panel voted 3:2 that the decision by Jones was a mistake, with the majority view being that “there is a two-handed push which is an unnecessarily reckless action”.
Tottenham, who lost the game 1-0, would have played the final 30 minutes against 10 men if Brobbey had been dismissed.
Yeah. Another example of the officials screwing over Tottenham Hotspur and then just issuing a “oops, sorry, our bad” statement. And it gets worse — Rob Jones is apparently the match official with the worst record of making major mistakes with regards to second yellow cards in Premier League matches.
KMI panel statistics show that Jones has been responsible for five of the 12 errors this season regarding second yellow cards not being shown. All of his mistakes should have resulted in red cards.
The other cases listed to involve Jones are Malick Thiaw (Newcastle at Bournemouth), Ruben Dias (Manchester City at Nottingham Forest), Rodri (Manchester City at Tottenham) and Cole Palmer (Chelsea v Leeds United).
Jones has the joint-most errors on second bookings in the past two individual seasons, with three recorded in 2024-25 and two in 2023-24.
Of 42 cases regarded as mistakes across the three campaigns, Jones has made 10 of them.
You know, when someone is bad at their job, usually the answer is to either fire them or move them to a different position that might suit their skills better. While we don’t yet know the outcome from this report, apparently Rob Jones has been given a number of second chances already, because most people don’t make mistakes in 5/12 incidents in their job and expect to stay in that particular job. But that’s the PGMOL for you.
We have no idea whether Brobbey being sent off would’ve meant a different result than the 1-0 loss to Sunderland. But we DO know it would’ve changed the tenor of the rest of the match, considering Spurs would’ve played the last 30 minutes up a player, and who knows what might have happened? Maybe Spurs get a scoreless draw instead of a loss. That’d still have kept Tottenham in 18th place, just one point behind West Ham instead of two. But as we know, in a relegation battle every point is critical and sacred. Rob Jones screwed Spurs out of at least one point with that ridiculous non-decision, and I’m still mad about it.
Odds are you are too.
