Kavanagh, PGMOL, and a System That Keeps Failing

The Premier League has just confirmed that Chris Kavanagh would not be officiating any of its fixtures this weekend, following a performance in the FA Cup fourth-round match between Aston Villa and Newcastle United.

The match was played at Villa Park on Saturday, 14 February 2026, without the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), as is standard for all FA Cup ties before the fifth round. Kavanagh and his assistants Gary Beswick and Nick Greenhalgh were the only officials on duty, with no review system available if they got something wrong.

They got many things wrong.

Tammy Abraham was offside when he contributed to Villa’s opening goal, and the flag stayed down, Lucas Digne challenge on Newcastle’s Jacob Murphy should have been a red card, but Kavanagh did nothing.

The 40-year-old referee also decided to award a free kick when Digne handled the ball inside the penalty area. Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali scored from it, and the goal stood.

Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney, reviewing the match on Match of the Day, called the handball decision “one of the worst” he had ever seen from an official.

Newcastle also had two penalty appeals turned down, and the referee refused to check a possible offside against Dan Burn on the equaliser.

It was, by most counts, a difficult 90 minutes for the man in the middle.

But this is not the first time we have seen this in English football.

Chris Kavanagh is a senior referee

Kavanagh has been a Premier League official since April 2017 and joined FIFA’s international referees list in 2019.

In December 2025, he was promoted to UEFA’s elite referee list with the likes of Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor. That means he is a referee who has earned his stripes at the highest level of the game in Europe. His domestic record, though, is something else.

In August 2025, he awarded a penalty against Everton’s James Tarkowski for handball in Leeds United’s favour. Ex-Premier League forward Chris Sutton, speaking on BBC Radio, called the decision “a scandal.”

The following month, Wolverhampton’s Yerson Mosquera hit Newcastle’s Harvey Barnes with a forearm to the face while Barnes was running towards the Wolves goal. Neither Kavanagh nor VAR called it. Former PGMOL chief, Keith Hackett, said “They should not receive an appointment next week.”

PGMOL is a private company introduced in 2001 to bring professional structure to English football. Former World Cup final referee, Howard Web, took over in 2022 for more transparency, and he has made some real progress so far.

The Match Officials Mic’d Up series, which shares referee audio with the public after selected matches, is one step towards that transparency. Then, there is also the Key Match Incidents (KMI) panel, where former officials independently grade referee’s performances.

VAR came, in the 2019-20 season, as the solution to some of these errors.

In its first season, ESPN reported that VAR added 27 goals and ruled out 56, a net loss of 29 goals across 38 weeks of football.

The technology is there, the infrastructure is there, but somehow the referees’ transparency keeps missing.

Silence is usually the safer choice

English football has an interesting way it handles people who raise concerns about officiating. It charges them.

A recent case is that of Manchester City star Rodri. The Ballon D’Or winner spoke after a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur and said what many coaches and players have thought but rarely said publicly.

“I know we won too much and the people do not want us to win,” he said, “but the referee has to be neutral. For me, honestly, it is not fair.”

In response, the FA charged the Spain international with misconduct, saying his comments implied bias and questioned the integrity of a match official.

Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was also fined £75,000 and given a two-match touchline ban in 2023 after he accused referee Paul Tierney of having something against Liverpool.

The difference is obvious. A club or a person can speak up and take whatever comes from it. Or they can wait for the PGMOL process to run its course. That happens behind closed doors and leaves no public record of what was found or what was changed.

When a referee does not show up on the weekly appointments list, that is the closest thing to a visible punishment you get.

Chris Kavanagh will return to Premier League duty. There is no way for a club like Aston Villa, that suffers from a bad decision, to get anything more than a private acknowledgment that a mistake was made.

The Premier League is the most-watched domestic football competition in the world. Its officiating is among the most resourced in global sport.

What it has not built, or has not chosen to build, is an accountability structure that the public can follow from start to finish.