Var

Given that we may have been given a penalty under VAR and that England were sawn off without
VAR i personally prefer the game without it . The ref makes a decision. Get on with it .
Watching the VAR circus this dinner time between Liverpool and ex-Watford FC who
in their right mind prefers the latter even if their team misses out ?

 

Nothing wrong with VAR, as long as the idiots who are supposed to be administering it use it right

 

VVD our for the season as a result of that Pickford ‘tackle’ which wasn’t even checked

Justice for Geri I say

 

Apparently as the 'tackle' would have been a red for Serious Foul Play, it can't be given as it was after an offside. Would have to be Violent Conduct to be a red. Silly rule, needs changing.

 

Definitely needs to be some leeway given. Ideally what I'd do is give the VAR officials a quick look at a call like that, if they can't spot a clear offside after a few seconds, let it go, but in the absence of that, we need some degree of margin of error, the technology isn't perfect, they can't spot the exact moment the ball left the player's boot

 

Easy to say this now that we've won, but while I thought we should have had a penalty last night, it was definitely not something I was getting too upset about at the time, decisions like that are a part of the game, and it would have been a really good call by the ref to pick it up

 

I was watching the highlights on Quest last night, and the commentators IMMEDIATELY said that's a penalty when Cleverley was brought down in the box, and they also said that Derby are very lucky to get away with that when the Derby defender pulled off the full length diving save from Chalobah.

 

There was definitely a slight tug on the arm of the Millwall keeper tbf, enough to affect his trajectory? Maybe, though it's definitely not something you'd expect the ref to notice. Set pieces are their forte, you worry about them if officials are on to them to the extent that they pick out things like that

 

Didn't think anything of the Cleverley incident just before half time tbf, maybe it would have been given with VAR, but it wasn't something I was stewing over at half time. Would have been soft

 

(BTW, I should point out I watched the game on Friday without commentary as I had it on a stream in which the audio was a bit ahead of the pictures, maybe listening to the comms would have had me thinking Clev should have been given a pen)

 

Agreed on both of these. Also the handball don't forget. Refs are clearly against us already. Tommy Mooney didn't think the Cleverly one was a pen but what does he know?

 

I'm not bothered by VAR anymore, seeing as it doesn't affect us. All it does is prove my point over the years that referees are just incompetent. They can't even make the right call with video replay, so what hope is there.

With the appeals in our game. I didn't think any were penalties. The two for us and the one for Derby. In reality, a penalty should be a fairly rare event.

 

They are talking in depth over the Everton/Liverpool match. The good thing about it happening to Liverpool, is that it gets picks up and talked to death about by the media. Had it been Watford it would have been overlooked, and laughed about.

With the offside and VAR, it's quite simple. You let the lineman/woman make the decision, as they've always done. If a player is miles offside, like Sterling was against us a couple of years ago at the Etihad, then it gets reviewed and chalked off, because a "clear and obvious" error occurred.

This is what has got forgotten. The clear and obvious aspect. As soon as you need to use the lines on the video screen, then it's not clear and obvious, so the original decision stands. I think this would clear up the offside situation at a stroke. It's just basic common sense. Disallow offside goals if it only takes one review of the replay and it's clear the player is offside.

Adversely, you will get a linesperson flag incorrectly, on occasion, but that's just the nature of the beast. Often the whistle will blow and no goal would be scored, which will avert many perfectly good goals from being scored in the first place.

I think this is the best way to deal with the VAR offside. There are far too many marginal goals being disallowed. Football is not a clinical game played in a scientific lab.

The PGMOL are the worst body of people to make the rules. It should be someone else, more in tune with the nature of football, that set the rules. Once the way forward has been agreed, then the PGMOL should be informed so their organisation can fumble their way through applying them.

 

The Liverpool offside was offside. If you have a black and white decision and the technology to spot if a decision is 100% correct or wrong, then it's silly to also ask that something is clear and obvious. You'd be in a situation where you'd potentially be watching replay of an offside decision, to determine whether the play (which you have learnt was offside) was clear and obvious enough to disallow.

It would be like requiring a ball, which had entirely gone over the goal line, to be even further over the line, just so the goal was more clear and obvious, or else it would be disallowed.

The annoyance from VAR for offsides really comes from two factors:

1. The time it takes to make a decision. If we are going to have technology in football, for offsides I'd change the rules so it only includes boots (rather than any part of the body you can score with). Does it really matter if a players head/ back/ shoulder is beyond the defender if his feet aren't?

2. Not presenting data in a useful way. They use camera angles which aren't down the line (making offside decisions look onside), and haven't gone to any lengths to explain the technology to fans. Therefore everyone just feels that the VAR technical experts are just making up each decision and getting it wrong.

I think it makes more sense to use technology to make this more of an instant decision which is clearer. If you changed the offside rule as above, you could have devices in players boots, which show where the players feet were when the ball was kicked and a decision could be made almost instantly with little ambiguity. An image of the pitch and the players boots (represented by the colour of their players team) could then be shown to TV audiences.

 

I do have very different views from most football fans though. I didn't want VAR when it was initially proposed (when most fans/ pundits were frothing at the mouth for it) as I thought it would be too ambiguous, require lots of stupid contradictory rules and slow the game down too much. I wanted to leave it at goal line tech.

Now it is here, I don't think it is as bad as most, and think we need to live with it, but tweak the way we use it. FIFA seems hellbent to take ambiguity out of the game (i.e. any ball which hits the arm is a penalty), but that makes the game worse and there will still be ambiguity in most decisions. Another issue is that the decisions/ rationale aren't voiced, like in rugby, and therefore there seems to be no transparency. Time to allow audiences to hear conversations to hear why they made the decision they made. And when we go back to stadiums, this needs to be displayed on big screens.

 

It doesn't matter what the technical aspect of the decision is. This is not what VAR is for. If a lineman can see in micro second, then fair enough, but they cannot. It should all reside with the linesman. What does he think.

If he doesn't notice Mane's shadow being in an offside position and allows play to continue, and the VAR official gives it a once over and can't tell without lines, then the linesman's decision stands....right or wrong.

VAR is for clear injustices......nothing more. This is where they have got it so wrong.....IMO.

 

I don't disagree that they are overusing the technology, but the problem is, the rulemakers need to define clear and obvious. Every VAR person upon seeing a decision once will have a different interpretation of clear and obvious. If you're asking someone to make a decision on something after seeing it once at one particular angle, miles away from the action, you'd be opening up the opportunity for further mistakes.

What if the VAR thinks immediately it is an offside and reckons he's a foot offside but the lineman doesn't flag. Do they check the decision to make sure the VAR person has got it correct? Or do they just go with VAR?

I think there are better technological ways of gaging offside, but until that it introduced, I think we're going to have to get used to VAR checking most tight-offside goals.

 

I'd honestly just scrap it for offsides and have it for off the ball incidents that the officials missed, and for reviewing potentially dangerous tackles where the officials may have missed a red card offence due to the speed of the incident or lack of a clear angle.

The assistant referees at the top level are ridiculously good at their job. Like, absurdly good. Before VAR, I reckon they dropped a bollock on an offside that lead to a goal maybe once or twice a season, individually. How many goals a season come from corners/throw-ins/free-kicks being awarded incorrectly? Do they need reviewing too?

Sound a bit like a divorced dad in a pub but it is ruining my enjoyment of the sport, a bit. Added to the lack of fans, it feels a million miles away from the football of 5-10 years ago at the moment.

 

It was always frustrating pre var when you had something bad go against you, like that spurs hand ball in the last minute and things like that. But how often did events like that happen, maybe 3-4 times a season to each club on average? Now with Var you’re getting controversy and annoyance in pretty much every game and in our case last season it still missed important hand balls anyway. I don’t really know what the answer is, but maybe it should become more passive, just have someone constantly monitoring it and only picking up really obvious errors, for example no need to go back and check every goal for minor infringements. You know, if they spot a Zidane headbut off the ball then obviously let the ref know, but if it brushes a players finger in the build up to a goal then so bloody what.

All the stupid rules need to be removed as well. Some of them stop common sense from being able to prevail, the hawkeye one last season was a farce, oh we can’t interfere even though we can see it’s a goal with our own eyes. That sort of crap really winds people up.

 

I’d make it coaches challenge. 1 free challenge and then referral costs a substitution if incorrect.

 

I don't know. Perhaps it's the NFL fan in me but I don't really care how long the decision takes to get right as long as it's the right one.

The bigger concern is the ones that aren't right. The Newcastle and Southampton handball misses came at the time when the objections to the speed of decisions were at their highest last season. Would we have cared if they spent another few minutes to get those right? Probably not.

 

Problem with that is the subjective nature of the decision. You challenge a penalty, there's contact but not given. Decision stays with the ref. You lose a sub? To another set of referees, it might be given. In the NFL, they gamble a time out on a decision (because they basically have a timeout during the review) but 99% of decisions are black and white. Not the case with football.

 

It's similar in cricket with umpire's call? Harder to reverse a decision once Ump has given it. I think as long as everyone accepts that then it works. You risk burning a sub but you get Jon Moss to look at the monitor and at least underline his incompetence if he doesn't reverse it.

 

In tennis, Hawkeye shows a black/white decision (provided you accept the technology and everyone does). In cricket they’ve cleverly incorporated a level of tolerance with the ‘umpire’s call’ element. But in football nothing is black/white except the ball over the line and the authorities don’t seem open to accepting any level of tolerance.

 

Key point is, and I suspect I'm not the only one... I'm not missing VAR whatsoever.

The only issue is a manager like Howe or Ferguson can use a lack of clarity, diving or whinging as a tool to influence the ref.

 

You'd hope the refs would be wise to their tricks now, but I wouldn't put anything past Championship refs

 

I bet we will miss it on Saturday against the perennial cheats Muff

 

You never see VAR on the lookout for diving. The amount of times you see a player go down with minimal to no contact, not just in the area, but all over the pitch.

Would the Blackburn penalty have been given with VAR? In its current state I think Yes because of the ‘he has a right to go down’ mentality. Really it should have been No because there is no foul there and he fell on the floor to buy the penalty as do all others in the game.

 

Absolutely right. All this stems from the fact that refs have been instructed to no longer take the responsibility of deciding whether a foul (or handball) is deliberate. This in turn has resulted from players and managers not abiding by the ref's decision when it went against them. The authorities shied away from enforcing punishment in those situations and instead have tried to make everything on the field a black and white decision. Hence, contact: you fall over and get a free kick/penalty.