Ref Watch

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Looking forward to the novel way Dermot ‘It was about right’ Gallagher explains the mid season handball rule change.

That is the one thing that really winds me up about the way the PL is run as a competition - rule changes mid-competition. It simply SHOULD NOT HAPPEN.

 

[halfcenturyup]

Whilst i don't go down the corruption road , It's mad to think some would happily accept going back to offsides allowed to stand even when the player can be 1-3 metres onside, it will happen alot and always

same for clear dives being given

red cards being missed etc

Sure, there's some marginal errors at times given wrong. but blatant crystal clear decisions given wrongly are miniscule compared to what we have before.

Do you have evidence to back up the claim that blatantly wrong decisions are now miniscule compared to pre-VAR. I don't mean PGMOL produced or sponsored numbers, I mean independently verified numbers?

 

[zandvoort blue]

.............................. It named 4 refs specifically, one of whom by then (already infamous to City fans) had left PGMOL to go abroad. Another was taken off our games for a while, the third did one of our games after that but booked a City player for a dive when it should have been a clear penalty. The last is still involved at the highest level.................

There was a lot of fuss about the Spurs Brighton game last week and the number of poor decisions that Brighton were on the end of. This was nothing compared to a City game at Goodison Park officiated by Peter Walton in January 2012 just prior to him jumping ship to oversea referring abroad. He was truly awful and refused to give any one of 4 nailed on penalties as City dominated Everton but went on to lose 1- 0.

Walton had a suspicious history of referring games involving City, and especially against Everton. From his Premier League debut in 2003/2004 his record with us in 13 games was W3 D4 L6. No wins with him in his last 4 seasons, which coincides with the ADUG ownership of MCFC.

Season 2003/2004 officiated a total of 5 PL games........1 game involving City
Charlton (H) 1-1 draw

Season 2004/2005 officiated a total of 14 PL games........1 game involving City
Arsenal (H) lost 1-2 LEAGUE CUP

Season 2005/2006 officiated a total of 13 PL games........2 games involving City
Sunderland (A) 1-2 win
Fulham (H) lost 1-2

Season 2006/2007 officiated a total of 16 PL games........NO games involving City

Season 2007/2008 officiated a total of 23 PL games........2 games involving City
West Ham (A) win 0-2
Bolton (H) win 4-2

Season 2008/2009 officiated a total of 26 PL games........1 game involving City
Liverpool (H) lost 2-3

Season 2009/2010 officiated a total of 27 PL games........2 games involving City
Liverpool (H) drew 0-0
Everton (H) lost 0-2

Season 2010/2011 officiated a total of 26 PL games........3 games involving City
Stoke (A) drew 1-1
Everton (H) lost 1-2
Fulham (H) drew 1-1

Season 2011/2012 - officiated a total of 15 PL games........1 game involving City
Everton (A) lost 1-0

If this pattern isn`t suspicious I don`t know what is. The worst referee to cross our paths in my time.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Do you have evidence to back up the claim that blatantly wrong decisions are now miniscule compared to pre-VAR. I don't mean PGMOL produced or sponsored numbers, I mean independently verified numbers?

I don't, will try and dig out something

 

[eyalluvitt]

Just seen Arsenal's penalty vs West Ham, Antonio was about a yard away and turning away with his hands near his chest and yet that handball was given as a penalty. Yet Maguire handball from a corner isn't considered a penalty with his arm out. Where is the consistency??

Same old story for the same old teams,

 

[SebastianBlue]

Do you have evidence to back up the claim that blatantly wrong decisions are now miniscule compared to pre-VAR. I don't mean PGMOL produced or sponsored numbers, I mean independently verified numbers?

The interesting thing is that prior to VAR adoption, the refereeing decision error rate was reported as quite low (officials were getting most decisions right!).

Then after VAR adoption, the refereeing error rate prior to VAR adoption was miraculously reported to be much higher (it had been discovered officials were getting more decisions wrong than previously reported!), with the refereeing decision error rate now roughly equaling the low pre-VAR rate (VAR is leading to most decisions now being correct, as opposed to the poor standard prior to VAR, a shambolic state recently be discovered!).

Funny that, isn’t it. Almost as if the reported error rate is whatever it needs to be to justify the current state of affairs.

But I would never suggest such a thing.

No, the Premier League is the only football league in the world (and history) completely free of corruption.

 

[halfcenturyup]

I don't, will try and dig out something

Fair enough.

Look, I am not trying to be combative here. I take the point that there has been improvement in some areas with VAR, and yes we aren't going back, but my gripe with refereeing isn't just VAR related.

There is no transparency, there is no consistency and there is no accountability. The laws are impractical and the interpretations ludicrous.

The whole thing needs a big shake-up, and VAR is just a part of that.

 

[The blue phantom]

I’ve never been one to go with the whole “The refs are all bent against us” I always thought they are just incompetent/shit for everyone. But this season and today especially, its getting more and more obvious that we are referee'd differently. The Bernardo booking was blatant bias against us. They had far, far worse fouls deemed not worthy of a yellow. And the handball pen was ridiculous. He must have looked 10 times at the var screen. It’s was one of the most obvious pens of the season. What finally did it for me was the delay to the kick off after the third goal. They were looking for anything to disallow a perfectly obvious good goal. Oh well, it’ll make it more sweeter when we win the league

The Arsenal and Scouse boards have agenda threads that we have every ref in our pocket. I'm not kidding either, Absolutely convinced that game after game decisions are going our way and the brown envelopes we dish out must be in the hundreds.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Fair enough.

Look, I am not trying to be combative here. I take the point that there has been improvement in some areas with VAR, and yes we aren't going back, but my gripe with refereeing isn't just VAR related.

There is no transparency, there is no consistency and there is no accountability. The laws are impractical and the interpretations ludicrous.

The whole thing needs a big shake-up, and VAR is just a part of that.

That’s the stance of most critics of VAR.

It’s not going away, it hasn’t been as positively impactful as many VAR proponents claim, and it needs significant reform.

And I would argue that the ludicrous implementation of VAR and the modification/interpretation of the rules in the PL especially to support it has actually created more suspicion of corruption than existed previously, because VAR was meant to reduce the frequency of the most contentious decisions, but has instead highlighted them via ridiculous levels of inconsistency between outcomes involving similar incidents.

Before the inconsistency resulting in suspect decisions could be rationally explained by different officials having to make split second decisions with very limited information.

But know they do the same practically every game (in the case of matches like Spurs v Brighton and our derby this season, multiple times in a game), despite having substantially more time and information to make the decisions.

And there is no accountability for the repeated “mistakes”, barring many public apologies from PGMOL that do absolutely nothing to make the victimised parties whole. Literally millions of dollars ride on these decisions—meaning many clubs are materially impacted by these “mistakes”—but that financial impact will never be addressed. I think specifically of clubs like Wolves and Brighton who have been on the end of numerous “mistakes” this season, and will likely suffer several more “mistakes” by the time the season finishes.

This is a substantial flaw and lends itself to reasonable suspicion of corruption. That is because repeated incompetence—with no real effort to correct it—becomes corruption.

 

[halfcenturyup]

The interesting thing is that prior to VAR adoption, the refereeing decision error rate was reported as quite low (officials were getting most decisions right!).

Then after VAR adoption, the refereeing error rate prior to VAR adoption was miraculously reported to be much higher (it had been discovered officials were getting more decisions wrong than previously reported!), with the refereeing decision error rate now roughly equaling the low pre-VAR rate (VAR is leading to most decisions now being correct, as opposed to the poor standard prior to VAR, a shambolic state recently be discovered!).

Funny that, isn’t it. Almost as if the reported error rate is whatever it needs to be to justify the current state of affairs.

But I would never suggest such a thing.

No, the Premier League is the only football league in the world (and history) completely free of corruption.

Yep. I have worked in a financial PR environment and you can prove pretty much anything you want with numbers. Bamboozling otherwise intelligent financial analysts with information they have no way of validating was always my favourite trick. Analyst presentations were great fun.

Which is why I am not buying PL or PGMOL numbers for one second.