Mike Dean received death threats after Tomáš Souček red card | OneFootball

Premier League referee Mike Dean received death threats following his decision to send off West Ham’s Tomáš Souček for an elbow against Fulham at the weekend.

Souček accidentally caught Fulham’s Aleksandar Mitrović in the face with his elbow at Craven Cottage and after studying the incident on the pitchside monitor, Dean elected to send the West Ham midfielder off for violent conduct.

The decision has been since been overturned.

However, The Times are reporting that some of Dean’s family members received online threats as a result of the sending off and Dean has asked not to be involved in any Premier League matches next week.

The threats have been reported to the police and he is still expected to officiate Wednesday’s FA Cup tie between Leicester and Brighton.

“Threats and abuse of this nature are totally unacceptable and we fully support Mike’s decision to report these messages his family received to the police,” Mike Riley, managing director of the Professional Games Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL), told The Times.

“Nobody should be a victim of abhorrent messages like this. Online abuse is unacceptable in any walk of life and more needs to be done to tackle the problem.”