Bournemouth To Discuss Legal Challenge After Premier League Relegation

They are keeping Dean Smith. They will be down next season.

 

That’s daft really. Obviously relegation and survival are binary, but if you were to look at Villa objectively they may have survived which of course is a success, but we’re they actually successful? They were incredibly lucky to survive with a number of favourable calls going their way, with an abnormally low points total and without beating WH on the final day, so even then it could’ve been taken out of their hands.

 

Weird one, they're getting rid of the guy who brought in all those players (hit and miss for them, although they had one hell of a job to do last summer in fairness to him), but keeping Smith? Strikes me as the sentimental choice, can't be seen to be treating a local boy badly...

 

They were atrocious this season. Everything went their way and they still only just managed to stay up.

Even if they keep Grealish. They will still struggle. He will be a a marked man next season.

Second season syndrome and all that. Plus they are just crap.

 

The league table doesn't lie.

 

Perfect example was when we played them. Mings (I think it was) scored the winner when he should have been sent off, and even admitted he was surprised to stay on.

 

Why? It’s an entirely different scenario. In one case, a club was (arguably) at fault, in the other it was the officials. If we reopen the latter, where do we stop?

 

Well. that's a wholly separate argument from original bit I quoted.

Regardless, slippery slope is a logical fallacy. The VAR officials objectively and clearly got this wrong, to the point where I would call them grossly negligent. This wasn't a marginal decision; it was a cockup of monumentally obvious proportions. Any member of the public who vaguely understood the rules of football could see it was fantastically wrong.

If your underlying point is that the officials shouldn't ever be held to account then I just don't agree. It's one thing making a mistake when you're unsighted and don't have the benefit of a replay. It's another thing entirely when you have 10,000 camera angles, replays, and all the time in world to review it multiple times.

I really hope they decide to pursue this. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

 

It's like when people claimed we were robbed of three points at Newcastle when the VAR ignored equaliser was in the 40th minute.

Fans will be fans. At least we can go back to good old fashioned slagging off the ref next season.

 

And I absolutely love to see it.

They're both Hawkeye. They're a tinpot company believe me, however VAR being crap is purely the PLs fault due to useless referees so can't blame them for everything.

 

You and me both, mate.

 

Absolutely VAR could have intervened, it was obvious from the goal line camera angle that something had gone wrong. They chose not to because they panicked.

 

Bournemouth were 7th at one point in the season. Even On New Year’s Day they were comfortably above the bottom three. They really fell into relegation through their own mismanagement of the back nine of the season. For us it was our atrocious start, and we spent most of the season in a fight to keep our heads above the relegation level.

So you can see why the shock is making them clutch at any straw.

 

Bournemouth put together some good form in the closing weeks of the season, 4-1 vs Leicester and 3-1 at Everton after losing their last nine away games and Everton having been unbeaten at home in their previous 11. It asks the question why couldn't they get those kinds of results earlier in the season? Then they wouldn't be moaning about being hard done by.

 

If Bournemouth win can we claim compo for the Reading 'goal' with interest? We could have been in the champions league by now if you extrapolate the number of points lost in that game over the years since.

 

There is no way anything will change football wise whatever the court says as the whole thing is about "Loss of Earnings"

It's all about "Financial Compensation" from Hawk Eye for the millions that their equipment failing has cost Muff, and had we been in Muffs position I would have wanted us to sue Hawk Eye too.

Nobody is suggesting there is any case to go to court about refereeing or VAR decisions, as that is just part of the game. However, the failure of the Hawk Eye equipment is a unique thing and Hawk Eye have publicly admitted that their equipment did indeed fail.

I am no lawyer, but I would say that because of the MILLIONS the equipment failure has indirectly cost Muff, by them being relegated by the exact same amount that Villa gained from that goal line equipment failure, might just carry some weight in a court of law.

Therefore Muff might just be awarded compensation from Hawk Eye, and think they should get it even though that would give them an advantage over us financially next season.

 

Three cheers for Jap’s Eye.

 

I'm no lawyer either but working in an industry where legal docs have to be watertight I'd imagine it will be an extremely difficult thing to quantify in terms of losses.

They can't simply say that the failure relegated them, there are countless variables around it which had more of an affect over the course of a season.

What about abandoned games due to power cuts and floodlights cutting? Rivets in a pitch breaking a star strikers leg? The times when the refs in ear coms with his assistants has failed? A player getting food poisoning? Where does it stop?

I would be amazed if hawkeye's contract didn't have mitigation for what was in effect a perfect storm of angles that judging by the usual reliability can be written off as horrible luck and by no means negligent and actionable.

 

We'd have done the same and I'd have been pretty bitter if we'd gone down on goal difference knowing that point was what kept them up (ie if we'd drawn with arsenal). As it is we have no right to be bitter because they were a point better, had a better goal difference and a better goals for than us

 

While I agree, our squad should have been good enough to finish way above where we did. We were poorly prepared and made two poor managerial decisions (keeping Javi after last season and employing QSF), we were playing catch up after that. Even with the poor runs in Pearson's stint or points per game were enough to be comfortably mid-table.

We're not the first and won't be the last team to go down from the PL with a fairly decent squad despite a couple of deficiencies. A mid-table level PL team would finish top 2 in the Championship and if we make the right squad and management decisions in the next month I would think that we have a very good chance of bouncing back at the first attempt.

 

The enormous problem Bournemouth would have if they sued Hawkeye (which they won't) is that they would have to prove Hawkeye was negligent. It's not a matter of proving that Hawkeye were wrong, because we all know that they were, but that they were wrong in such a careless or stupid way that amounts to negligence. Hawkeye's primary defence will be that the system was designed to help referees and is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate and there will be times when it view is obscured; this has happened once in 9,000 matches. Bournemouth would be trying to prove that for a complicated computer system to fail once in 9,000 matches is negligent and should not have happened - they won't succeed.

But if they sue the PL, then essentially they sueing because the referee got it wrong. And if clubs can sue for refereeing errors, then the game is dead. There is enough aggro about fans having to wait two or three minutes to celebrate a goal for VAR - if we have to wait two or three months for the Court verdict before we can celebrate, it will kill the game. It has long been an established principle in all sports that the ref's decision is final even when it's wrong. If that isn't accepted (and Bournemouth have specifically accepted it as part of their league membership) then there is no sport.

As for the VAR officials they had about 30 seconds before the ball went out of play and a throw-in was taken, from memory. They faced an unprecedented situation and they dithered too long. The ref could have asked for clarification from VAT - but he didn't. The linesman could have insisted that it looked like a goal and the ref should look at VAR - but he didn't. The VAR men could have said it looked like a goal and stopped play - but they didn't. And Sheffield United could have told the referee that it went in and he needs to consult VAR, and (if it was their restart, which I can't remember) made sure not to take the restart until the ref had had time to think - but they didn't. No-one knew what to do, everyone dithered, and it was quickly too late. Next time, they will know what to do.

 

They don't have a chance because their claim is akin to had the Harlequin barriers not malfunctioned then that driver wouldn't have crashed into me 10 minutes later while looking for somewhere else to park. Maybe the PL could try for something if they wanted to but it probably wouldn't even be worth their time?

 

No, my underlying argument is the slippery slope one. You might see it as a logical fallacy but I’m pretty convinced that the football authorities won’t.

 

I’m not somebody who cares about Bournemouth one way or the other, but anything that helps shine a light on the farcical use and implementation of VAR and the useless officials using it is a good thing on my book.

 

Legal responses:-
40th minute
37 other games
No
No
No

 

I don’t blame any of the on field officials for not doing anything. The mind plays tricks and they would’ve had a perception GLT was accurate so that not flagging a goal would’ve overruled what they ‘think’ they ‘might’ have seen in their own minds.

There is no excuse for those operating VAR though. Whatever the rules are they would’ve seen the ball clearly cross the line, that they didn’t do anything about that is unforgivable.

 

I agree. Whilst I think it is unfair to make referees justify any decisions given at any one moment I do think that whoever was in front of the VAR camera should be made to explain his non action. He was in a bubble under little or no pressure. Everyone at home could see instantly that it was a goal .

 

Interestingly, on the Newcastle one, the VAR admitted he did not check all available camera angles so did not see the handball...seems "negligent" to me.