McAnuff says he has friends who used to play that would like to referee

Reading winger Jobi McAnuff says it is time that former players were encouraged to take up refereeing.

McAnuff was unhappy with the performance of Andy Haines after the Royals lost 2-1 at Derby.

He told BBC Berkshire: "It's the little things which as a player you've seen how things happen, but these guys don't seem to see those incidents.

"There are a lot of ex-players out there knocking about who'd love to be out here on a Saturday."

McAnuff added that in his opinion the standard of refereeing is an ongoing problem in the Championship.

"The standard in this league needs to improve, it's as simple as that," he said.

"They're OK when the game's flowing around, but you're going to get incidents during games, when everyone's scrapping for their lives, and they seem to lose control and it descends into chaos. It's a recurring theme.

"With all due respect, you look at the typical referee and there are certain images that get conjured up: middle aged, school-teacher types.

"If you could get ex-pros involved, on certain occasions when they honestly got things wrong, we'd give them a bit more leniency, because it would be a genuine mistake rather than a lack of knowledge or know-how from not playing the game."

Reading striker Shane Long was shown the red card late in the game at Pride Park and McAnuff said it highlighted the poor performance of the referee.

He said: "Don't get me wrong, it was a bad tackle and he probably deserved to get sent off, but you take it back 30 seconds and it's our free-kick and it would never have happened."

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