awooga83 James on arsecast made a point a few weeks back on this type of topic which was basically I don't think referees are very much different today then from 30 years ago. They are essentially performing as they always have but there is so much more scrutiny
I made a post covering this ground a couple of weeks ago. Back in the 90s the main qualities a ref needed were fitness, personal authority, emotional resilience and a good knowledge of the laws, a decision once taken was hard to critique, you wouldn't have alternate footage or the internet etc, so refs were decent at their jobs and beyond that just had very thick hides.
Thing is, that's actually got to change now we've got the same sort of referees making decisions that are provably incorrect on a fairly regular basis. The next thing is, the way PGMOL's operating seems to be set up to protect an anxious cohort of referees who aren't quite up to scratch.
We've had some seriously embarrassing situations, such as the VAR who didn't draw the offside lines—quite a few of these guys seem to be behind the pace but instead of fixing that, they've made up a complex system of penalties for complaints, mostly unsuccessful appeals and systematic PGMOL excuse-making. And they're still making a bloody hash of it.
