Pulis questions referee decision after FA fine

Matt Stead

Tony Pulis has questioned the FA’s decision to award referee Anthony Taylor a Chelsea game even after the manager was fined for earlier criticisms of the official.

The West Brom boss was fined £8,000 by the Football Association on Thursday after admitting an improper conduct charge following last week’s 3-2 home defeat to Leicester.

He was upset with Taylor’s decision not to award Albion two penalties and confronted the official after the game.

Taylor is set to take control of Stoke’s televised clash with Chelsea on Saturday and Pulis, who has failed to properly speak to referees’ chief Mike Riley, remains upset.

“The LMA are doing the most they possibly can to try to bring us together and yet we get no feedback on Anthony’s performance on Saturday,” he said, ahead of Saturday’s trip to Manchester United.

“I got the fine and the club got punished because we dropped points because of those decisions and then you see Anthony Taylor has got one of the top games this weekend. It is most probably the best game and the game most people will watch on Saturday.

“I just hope and pray that it’s not just lip service. I hope they do take some notice of what we do.

“What is disappointing is the fact we sent in a response, I’ve tried to get hold of Mike who is in Japan and Mike has tried to send me a message back and we’ve not been able to get hold of each other.”

Pulis had previously urged the FA to reveal where the cash collected from fines goes and reiterated that stance.

He said: “Greg Dyke has been a fantastic advocate for transparency in FIFA and UEFA. I’ll be writing him a letter and asking him where my £8,000 is going.

“The FA is a non-profitable organisation so if it’s going to a charity, which I hope it is, I’d like to send it to the Donna Louise Hospice in Stoke on Trent and I’d like transparency on that.”

In response to Pulis’ demand last week an FA spokesman had said: “The FA is a not for profit organisation that puts its funds back into football at every level of the game, including grassroots football.

“We have been able to achieve this at a rate of more than £100m a year consistently. All of the funds from fines go back into FA revenues which subsequently help us fund football from the grassroots through to the FA Cup.”

Pulis takes his team to Old Trafford aiming for a third straight win at United and will assess “one or two” knocks but is likely to have an unchanged squad.