Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher have both finally broken their silence on the David Coote controversy after a video emerged of him slamming Liverpool and their former manager Jurgen Klopp.
Neville and Carragher are perhaps the most high-profile pundits in English football at the moment, and they’d been surprisingly quiet on the Coote saga in the last couple of days.
However, they have now discussed what should happen next with the former Premier League referee on today’s episode of The Overlap.
See below for the full video, with Neville suggesting he thinks it would be a bit harsh for Coote not to be able to ever referee a Premier League game again, though Carragher feels it’s very difficult to imagine him being able to come back from this…
Although Neville agrees that Coote taking charge of Liverpool games would not be appropriate, Carragher also feels there are too many other games involving Liverpool’s rivals that would also not be suitable for Coote.
Will we see David Coote in the Premier League again?
Roy Keane seemed to side with Neville on this one, so perhaps the overwhelming view is that there is a case for a more lenient response to this incident, even if it’s clearly pretty serious.
The pundits also seemed to agree that surely all referees will have expressed views about teams, managers and players that they dislike, but that most of these things don’t happen to end up being filmed like this one.
Carragher seemed adamant that this would severely limit Coote’s ability to referee in the Premier League, but Keane again described that view as “extreme”.
It will be interesting to see what kind of decision is made once the PGMOL have finished their investigation into Coote.
