Ref Watch

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Still more accurate than the yards margin of error some Lino’s use to give mate.

It's a binary decision - ON or OFF.

Lino and refs have got it indisputably wrong before VAR; they continue to get it wrong now. The difference is that now, they hide behind the tech, and try and tell us it's better. It isn't

 

[Saddleworth2]

It's a binary decision - ON or OFF.

Lino and refs have got it indisputably wrong before VAR; they continue to get it wrong now. The difference is that now, they hide behind the tech, and try and tell us it's better. It isn't

statistically it is.

 

[kaz7]

After months and months of debating fairly and rationally , constantly stating the pros AND cons , pointing out where it needs massive improvement and ways to improve VAR but standing by that I would rather VAR in place in the game than without it

It was clear the only opinion your allowed on here is ‘It’s all corrupt , football is finished ‘

So I bowed out this thread much to delight of many posters including yourself - and it’s amusing you all tag me whenever there’s controversy, so basically hounded out for debating fairly yet you lot want my opinions when it suits

For what it’s worth - there’s no defending the decisions yesterday against Brighton, utter shambles

Because you dive in on refs and var as soon as they make a decision you agree with but awol when the corruption is in full view , if you are so quick to praise you should be as quick to condemn it , but you dont. Both of you were on yesterday but silent,forgive me for thinking you are both selective on the subject

 

[Charliegull]

Exactly. The Mitoma 'goal' was probably correctly disallowed as the current interpretation (at least the one this week) appears to now class anything below the armpit as handball. But the Welbeck one wasn't. as it hit the hip of his teammate and the two penalties not given appeared to be

statistically it is.

Spurs v Brighton statistically its not.

The only conclusion from that game is match fixing. Just waiting for news of Irregular betting patterns on that game.

Whilst im happy to have VAR in the game, if used to get the correct decision if fans and pundits are still debating the decisions then its not working. Either have a complete review on who uses it, how its going to be used and what is to be reviewed and what happens if a decision is given wrong. Until then scrap it.

 

[Saddleworth2]

Spurs v Brighton statistically its not.

The only conclusion from that game is match fixing. Just waiting for news of Irregular betting patterns on that game.

Whilst im happy to have VAR in the game, if used to get the correct decision if fans and pundits are still debating the decisions then its not working. Either have a complete review on who uses it, how its going to be used and what is to be reviewed and what happens if a decision is given wrong. Until then scrap it.

I was talking about offside as were you. Now you are talking about Spuds/Brighton?

 

[deano ou812]

Has Dermot Gallagher given us his tuppence worth over the Spurs Brighton game I’m sure he’s made sure not to blame atwell or VAR,it’s like an old boys club and they close ranks looking out for each other,just call it out for what it is ffs corruption..

 

[Bozzie]

Has Dermot Gallagher given us his tuppence worth over the Spurs Brighton game I’m sure he’s made sure not to blame atwell or VAR,it’s like an old boys club and they close ranks looking out for each other,just call it out for what it is ffs corruption..

He was floundering albeit he did agree that both incidents were penalties and couldn’t understand why Atwell had backed himself into a corner by indicating a ‘no foul’ signal. The handball’s are debatable imo and VAR probably wouldn’t overrule the on field decision either way. The same (former Liverpool defender) Stephen Warnock who thought Rodri should’ve definitely walked last week was happy to give Connor Gallagher the benefit of the doubt this week cos hey “not every foul’s a yellow card” !!

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

statistically it is.

Statistically not, unless of course you have stats of all the decisions pre var that were incorrectly given to compare against PGMOL data that hasn't been publicly released?

Anecdotally, perhaps...

 

[hgblue]

Spurs v Brighton statistically its not.

The only conclusion from that game is match fixing. Just waiting for news of Irregular betting patterns on that game.

Whilst im happy to have VAR in the game, if used to get the correct decision if fans and pundits are still debating the decisions then its not working. Either have a complete review on who uses it, how its going to be used and what is to be reviewed and what happens if a decision is given wrong. Until then scrap it.

So your solution to corruption is to scrap the potential safety net? Lets say, for arguments sake, the on field referee wanted to ensure that Spurs won that game. Pre VAR, he could say he just didn't see the infringements in question and that would be the end of it. Honest mistakes, move on. People forget in the 'good old days', we would have thread after thread on here about various officials having it in for City. Having only one person involved in the process is far more open to corruption. Also, pointless bribing assistant referees these days because offsides are now checked by VAR. In short, if you're worried about corruption in the game you should be right behind VAR.

So what's going wrong? First of all the opponents of VAR don't mention the vast majority of VAR interventions which correct on field mistakes, but lets leave that aside. Why is a professional referee looking at an incident which 99.9% of people can see is an obvious penalty and failing to intervene? The problem is with the protocol and with how VAR is being used, this is where the focus should be. I suspect the root of the problem is the constant whining about VAR intervening too much and ruining the flow of the game/undermining the authority of the referee from people who never wanted it in the first place. This has led to the reluctance of VAR to get involved unless it's a 'clear and obvious' error, which in turn has led to VAR operators stressing about whether the error is large enough to justify a review rather than just judging each incident on it's merits and asking the referee to use the available technology to re-evaluate something he may have missed. If I were the on field referee I'd much prefer to be given the opportunity to correct an error than to look like an absolute plank in front of the entire football community. We need to get back to that.

 

[halfcenturyup]

This is the best frame (from the best angle) of the incident. It is seemingly not the one they used to determine if it hit his arm—they used a worse angle from further away, looking on from behind the goal, which made it impossible to say if it hit his arm.

I have seen all of the angles and I think it just hit his hip as he tried to tuck in his arms as tight as he could and turn away from the shot.

Disallowing that goal is not only stupid from an evidence perspective (read “highly suspect) but it violates the spirit of the game, as what is he meant to do there.

There’s also no consistency, as goals from similar incidents have been allowed and disallowed, seemingly with no reasoning for why the decisions differ. It seems, from an outside perspective, that they just make up the rules to suit what they need at the time.

That certainly seemed to be the case today in this match.

And Atwell is literally looking straight at the incident the entire time!

I personally believe, due to the adoption of VAR, they have intentionally made the handball and offside rules ambiguous so that there is a leeway in practice when reviewing incidents, allowing them to chose when and how to attempt to influence match outcomes, and provide plausibility deniability whatever decision is made.

And today was an especially blatant example of them doing it throughout the match to aid Spurs at the expense of Brighton.

I like the term plausibility deniability. It presumably means the ability to deny plausibility, which is pretty accurate in this situation.