Mike Dean has become the latest ex-Premier League referee to admit to bizarre behaviour while in the middle.

The former referee, who took charge of Premier League games for 22 years, said he used to play games while overseeing matches such as seeing how long he could go before blowing his whistle and how long he could get away with standing in the centre spot.

But Dean is not the first, and presumably not the last, ex-referee to open the door on life at the top of the game. Here are four times Premier League referees have openly admitted to some bizarre behaviour.

The Battle of the Bridge was a defining moment in Leicester’s 2016 title win but the man in the middle that day later admitted he came into the match with a “gameplan”

“If I sent three players off from Tottenham, what are the headlines? ‘Clattenburg cost Tottenham the title.’ It was pure theatre that Tottenham self-destructed against Chelsea and Leicester won the title,” Clattenburg told the Men in Blazers podcast.

“Some referees would have played by the book; Tottenham would have been down to seven or eight players and probably lost and they would’ve been looking for an excuse.

“But I didn’t give them an excuse, because my gameplan was: Let them lose the title.”

Let’s just take a minute to unpack that. Firstly, how much do you have to think of yourself to believe that the day after Leicester City complete a 5000/1 underdog story to win the Premier League title, you would be the headline news?

Ignoring that revelation of a huge ego for one second, how can it possibly be fair that a referee would approach a match with a “gameplan” regardless of how the actual match played out? If a Spurs player went and punched a Chelsea one, would Clattenburg have stuck to his plan then?

Clattenburg’s comments were rightly met with anger, especially from Spurs fans, and was a glimpse into how top-level referees appeared to think.

VAR is about as popular as stepping in a muddy puddle with new shoes on and one of the reasons for that is a general mistrust of the people making the decisions.

There is a feeling that it is a boys’ club with everyone trying to protect their mates and that feeling was proven true in 2023 when Mike Dean admitted he did not send Anthony Taylor to the screen for a review as he was a “mate.”

“I missed the stupid hair pull at Chelsea versus Tottenham which was pathetic from my point of view,” Dean told Simon Jordan’s Up Front podcast.

“It’s one of them where if I had my time again, what would I do? I’d send Anthony [Taylor] to the screen. I think I knew if I did send him to the screen… he’s cautioned both managers, he’s had a hell of a game, it’s been such a tough game end to end.

“I said to Anthony afterwards: ‘I just didn’t want to send you to the screen after what has gone on in the game.’

“I didn’t want to send him up because he is a mate as well as a referee and I think I didn’t want to send him up because I didn’t want any more grief than he already had.”

Which sums up just about everything wrong with VAR.

In 2013, former referee Mark Halsey released the autobiography of his time in the middle and rather than enhance his legacy, it did the exact opposite.

Halsey admitted to sending texts with Sir Alex Ferguson and to staying at a five-star hotel in the Algarve on the dime of Jose Mourinho. He also admitted to ending a first half early because he needed the loo.

But his worst admission came a few years later when he suggested that he had been told to ignore certain incidents.

It came after Sergio Aguero was given a three-game ban and someone on Twitter asked him how referees could miss something so egregious.

His reply was that he had “been in that situation when I have seen an incident and been told to say I haven’t seen it.”

He pointed the finger directly at the PGMOL who denied the claims.

It is not just domestically that Premier League refs disgraced themselves, as they do it on the continent too.

Graham Poll was reffing a Champions League tie between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund and admitted to asking Zinedine Zidane for his shirt three times whilst the game was going on.

Apparently, it got to the point that Zidane even began to find it distracting and struggle to focus on, you know, the massive football game he was taking part in.