VAR - 2020/21

[Eds]

The Martial/Mane/Bernardo/Shaw incidents show why VAR won’t succeed in it’s aims on subjective decisions. It just continues the fallibility of humans and adds extra humans into the mix.

the offside thing is annoying too. Offside should be back and white, like goal line calls. But the factor of the position of the player v the proximity of when the pass was made means it is technically impossible at present to be accurate using the video. The governing bodies won’t even tel us margin of error. If it was confined to the “yards off” decisions I’d be just ok with that but it isn’t.

no good pretending it is leading to better decision making cos it really isnt. It’s just different decisions with different mistakes.

Look at those incidents again and most fans will tell you then if Martial is sent off them so must Lamela or both yellow cards. Not so long ago the ref would have pulled them to one side and told them to stop pissing around play the game. Mane was a red all day long as were the other two incidents. In fact the Shaw one was the worst of the lot as he blatantly just kicked him. It was interesting to see the reaction of Ole gonna do nowt in the background who thought he had another player going to be sent off. VAR / ref IMO and many others got all four of these wrong

 

[stonerblue]

VAR will stick around until ALL the american owned red shirts have each won another PL. "A strong Manure is good for the PL" stated the impartial PL leader a couple of seasons ago. It was shown perfectly yesterday after the final whistle in the 100th minute at Brighton!!!

A new form of nonsense i have never senn before. Truly fuckin ridiculous

 

[danielwood5]

agree, but that's the laws of the game... It's not VAR you should be angry at.

out of interest, how offside should be allowed ?

I think this is the main problem with the stat you quoted about there being more correct decisions with VAR, it seems more likely that the decisions are 'correct' because the laws of the game have been rewritten to suit VAR.

The Raheem Sterling Champions League example you were talking about shows the difference between the two sets of laws being used. I don't think at the time of that game the laws had been changed so during that game the benefit of the doubt should have been given to the attacker (it wasn't) and the fact that the player was coming from an offside position and moving into an onside position, therefore gaining no advantage, should have been taken into account when determining offside (it wasn't). So using this example that you've been discussing, VAR was actually used to give a decision that was actively against the laws of the game and therefore, wrong. It may have been correct when compared to the VAR guidelines, who knows though as they seem to change every week.
Since then the laws have been changed to suit VAR, no benefit of the doubt to attackers as it's now a black and white decision like goal line technology, except it isn't as the technology doesn't work well enough for it to be used that way. If we're assuming that the person freezes the frame at the correct point then maybe we are getting these millimetre offside decisions correct now so that goes towards your percentage stat increase of correct decisions. We had to actively change the laws of the game to get to that point though by removing benefit of the doubt to the attacker.

Handball is the same, if you change the laws to suit VAR better then you get to the point were at now where any kind of contact is a handball. This is great for the correct decision stats but a disaster for the game, which is why they appear to have changed the laws again.

You also keep saying that VAR has stopped diving but it absolutely hasn't, all that's changed is the DEFINITION of diving has changed. Diving used to be when a player decided to go down to make it look like they had been fouled and that seems perfectly fine to me. Now it seems literally impossible to dive, if an attacker has their arm ever so slightly brushed against by a defender and then, for some inexplicable reason, their knees buckle and they throw their arms in the air while throwing themselves to the ground then that isn't diving now as VAR shows us that there's 'contact' and he's now 'entitled to go down'. We had three penalties given against us against Leicester this season and all three of them were dives as the player wasn't forced to fall over, they DECIDED to fall over. It's OK though, VAR looked at the referees decision and they could find a slight bit of minimal contact therefore it's the correct decision, hurrah! Another one to bump up the 'correct' VAR stats.

VAR is an absolutely pointless addition to the game, the laws have been changed to suit it to the detriment to a sport that's worked for well over a century.

The biggest reason for all this is that there has to be controversy and talking points when you have 24 hour rolling sports coverage. The vast majority of the 'wrong' decisions made in games were actually perfectly acceptable to the match going fan, close call offsides went for you and against you, some fouls you got and some you didn't. It was all part of the game but now with Sky winding up the armchair internet not-rights, every marginally small incorrect decision is a huge travesty to the sport that has to be discussed to death by pundits and experts (particularly when it goes against a team that has a huge worldwide following, why else do you think some referees are afraid of giving decisions against Liverpool, United, etc? In my opinion it probably isn't brown envelopes, it's more likely they don't want Carragher, Neville, Aldridge, et al dragging them over the coals on the TV and in the papers for a perceived injustice against their team). A good example of this is from a few years ago when City knocked Everton out of one of cups. The winning goal came from a cross that almost went out of play for a goal kick. Looking at it from a lot of camera angles it looked very much like it should have been a goal kick but during the game a shot was shown looking directly down the line, it was clear it didn't go out and that it was a perfectly good goal. Obviously, that clear shot of the ball in play was never seen again but all the other angles were all over Sky and the papers, it gave them a good weeks worth of clicks, have your says and phone ins which is all the sporting press are after. "Ball looked like it went out of play but actually didn't" doesn't get quite the same attention or air time.

VAR in and of itself isn't the worst thing in the world for the sport, the way it's used is. Referees need to make their decisions the way they used to rather than worrying about VAR and the VAR operator shouldn't be afraid to tell the referee that he's missed something. This is where the frustration for most fans comes in, it's ridiculous when you see a stupid decision in slow motion from multiple angles and you know the VAR guy sees the exact same stupid decision but does nothing about it because 'it isn't a clear and obvious error'. They also need to be much more consistent to all teams with it, if referees are constantly giving the benefit to the same teams then VAR should be stopping that by pulling them up on it during games, if it isn't fair and consistent then it will never be accepted. It's one thing if a referee is a bent bastard during a game but it's so much worse knowing that there's another referee watching all these decisions and doing nothing to change them EVEN THOUGH HE CAN AND THAT'S HIS ENTIRE JOB! They also need to stop equating 'contact' with 'foul', at the moment VAR is just a licence to cheat for players that way inclined (Mane, Salah, Vardy, that cheat at Utd who's name I can't remember, etc).

Sure VAR can spot if an attacker is maybe a millimetre offside but who cares when it doesn't spot blatant handball (Alexander-Arnold), pushes in the box (Gomez? V Sterling), attacker fouling the defender in the build up to a goal (Lyon's second goal in the Champions League last season), a goal being scored from the arm (Spurs in the Champions League), can't spot a blatant dive (Liverpool, Utd, Leicester pick a game
) or is used to wrongly chalk off a winning goal due to an incorrect offside decision in a Champions League knockout game (Spurs again)?
Most City fans see it this way, sure its given us some fairly inconsequential decisions (retaken penalties due to encroachment, stuff like that) in games that either didn't matter or we were already well ahead in but in the big crunch games when we needed the decisions to be correct and the application of the laws of the game to be fair and equal to both teams we did not get that.

In answer to your question though, for offsides the VAR/referee should get 5 seconds to look at the still shot of the players, without the computer lines being drawn on it, and if he can't see someone is definitely offside then use the actual laws of the game and give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

The only way that I can think of at the moment to get offside working given the frame rate issue when it isn't clear is to take two consecutive frames - as close to when the ball is played. If offside in both, you're off.

It's going to be very rare that it would not be clear then, and it should be relatively quick to judge.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

One of the commentators on Saturday said something like 'that would have been given last weekend' and it sounds so wrong. It seems to suggest making up the rules as you go along and to suit certain teams are somehow normal and ok.

It does sound weird but it could only suggest the last bit if they could predict which matches a ball would strike an arm.

They relaxed the interpretations before the weekend, and that's what they referred to: https://www.premierleague.com/news/1849937

 

[danielwood5]

IMO offsides should be clear air between attacker and defender and not this toenail business.....it still relies on the TV company using the most appropriate frame for the VAR to use depending on which side you sit and then for the VAR to draw a straight line which he looks quite often they can't! You could see VAR was bent when we lost to Spuds at home in Chumps league....TV company didn't show the handball picture to us or VAR until the goal had been given and play had restarted so no going back. You can support VAR all you like with stats this and surveys that.....it all comes down to "it's bollocks!"

I think you've misremembered this one. In the Spurs game we were all shown the angle that showed the ball coming off Llorente's arm while the referee was walking over to the monitor then we watched the referee watch all the angles except the one that showed it hitting his arm. I think at one point we had a split screen with one half showing the handball to us and one showing the ref the useless angles.
It was such a bizarre situation, I remember that the MEN contacted UEFA about the referee not seeing all the angles and the reply was '“All relevant angles were made available to the referee to take his decision last night.” but it wasn't clear what that meant. Did the TV companies only give some of the angles to the VAR team or did the VAR team have all the angles but decided not to show them all to the referee? Its such a vague statement, I have no idea who controls what's shown to the match officials.
It's really unfortunate that our first exposure to VAR was this shit show which was closely followed up next season by the Spurs/Laporte handball game and then the hugely corrupt game against Liverpool at Anfield a few weeks after that. We've had a few VAR decisions go our way but they were all either things that should/would have been spotted by the refs/linos, irrelevant to the outcome of a game or were at the point where the season was over anyway. I think its going to take a season or two of questionable match winning decisions going our way while our nearest rivals are disadvantaged when they need to be to make up for the last couple of seasons decisions.

 

[born2bblu]

VAR is not a technology. VAR is a human, who has his/her own interests and biases, hiding somewhere to make decisions while looking at quick events in a slow motion. The decisions could be incompetent or biased, just similar to the decisions of the other three on the pitch. Anyone could have done the same from home, and perhaps eventually it will be done from home for them to claim: we advanced the technology. It is slowing and eventually killing the game as we knew it. I will not be surprised if TV companies pushed for it because VAR could appeal to some TV viewers who are followers of other sports and started watching football a few years ago. The only technology that I am aware of and benefited the game was the goal line technology, and that was a real technology because humans don’t make its calls.

 

[Nellies left peg]

VAR is not a technology. VAR is a human, who has his/her own interests and biases, hiding somewhere to make decisions while looking at quick events in a slow motion. The decisions could be incompetent or biased, just similar to the decisions of the other three on the pitch. Anyone could have done the same from home, and perhaps eventually it will be done from home for them to claim: we advanced the technology. It is slowing and eventually killing the game as we knew it. I will not be surprised if TV companies pushed for it because VAR could appeal to some TV viewers who are followers of other sports and started watching football a few years ago. The only technology that I am aware of and benefited the game was the goal line technology, and that was a real technology because humans don’t make its calls.

Imagine last season villa against Sheffield United and that goal not being given relegating the blades. Even goal line technology is flawed and needs the human touch at times

 

[half & half derby scarf]

I think you've misremembered this one. In the Spurs game we were all shown the angle that showed the ball coming off Llorente's arm while the referee was walking over to the monitor then we watched the referee watch all the angles except the one that showed it hitting his arm. I think at one point we had a split screen with one half showing the handball to us and one showing the ref the useless angles.
It was such a bizarre situation, I remember that the MEN contacted UEFA about the referee not seeing all the angles and the reply was '“All relevant angles were made available to the referee to take his decision last night.” but it wasn't clear what that meant. Did the TV companies only give some of the angles to the VAR team or did the VAR team have all the angles but decided not to show them all to the referee? Its such a vague statement, I have no idea who controls what's shown to the match officials.
It's really unfortunate that our first exposure to VAR was this shit show which was closely followed up next season by the Spurs/Laporte handball game and then the hugely corrupt game against Liverpool at Anfield a few weeks after that. We've had a few VAR decisions go our way but they were all either things that should/would have been spotted by the refs/linos, irrelevant to the outcome of a game or were at the point where the season was over anyway. I think its going to take a season or two of questionable match winning decisions going our way while our nearest rivals are disadvantaged when they need to be to make up for the last couple of seasons decisions.

This is bang on the money. We were sat behind someone in the South Stand who had the freeze frame of it hitting Llorente's arm as the ref walked over to the monitor. The ref shrugged his shoulders after looking at the monitor and so was wilfully cheating or hadn't been shown the decisive footage.

 

[half & half derby scarf]