It people don’t think anything’s been manipulated, do they think the current system is going to get more decision right or wrong than pre-VAR where offside is concerned?
To answer this question I'd have to say I don't know. Looking at the way it was used purely in our game I'd have to say that it could go either way, we got one offside call go for us and one against which is probably what we would have got without VAR watching them in real time so I don't think anythings changed there except we would probably have been given the first goal and the second disallowed instead.
The penalty retake went in our favour but encroachment should be something a referee working with his linesman should be able to deal with without VAR but it's just been ignored for God knows how long.
The biggest issue I have with it so far is that I don't know how it works for offside, the grainy stills we've been shown in our game don't look like anyone could use them to definitively say if the play was offside or not, Walton has told us that they're not using the footage we see to work out offside but something much better and more accurate. That sounds great to me but what is it? Why does nobody know how they're working these things out with the precision that's being claimed?
It's like on BT after our game the 'pundits' went over the VAR decisions and told us that they were all perfect, not an ounce of doubt about any of them as the technology had been used and its infallible. They showed the first offside with the slightly overlapping armpit and explained that 'leave means leav.....', sorry, that 'you're either offside or not' and that the technology proves it beyond any doubt. They then move on to the next offside and said 'this one was even harder to tell in real time' but then didn't show the still that was used to show this 11mm offside. I think they didn't show it again because it's difficult to claim something is measured accurately when one of the moving objects being tracked is so fast it's a blur!
Pundits are making our that this is completely black and white with no leeway for error and that's starting to bug me because what we're being shown doesn't represent this foolproof system.
They need to explain what this technology is that they're using and then people may be able to get on board a bit. We'll probably still have issues with it, i.e where does Sterling's arm end and shoulder begin, if he was wearing a skin tight shirt would that have been a goal, is that frame taken at the point of contact with the ball or whatever. Then again this technology that's being used that nobody knows about may have all that covered, who knows. It just feels like if they tell everyone enough times that it's perfect then people will believe them and that they don't need to explain the technology because football fans are too thick to indestand it anyway.
Personally I think they need to add a little common sense to the game and ask if someone is looking to gain an advantage by having their armpit 11mm ahead of a defenders arse and try taking it from there. I also think it's a bit of a waste of technology of they're only going to use it to find incredibly marginal offsides, I'd like to see it used to eradicate things like diving, defenders holding at set plays and things that are an actual blight of the game. When they start using it for things like that then I may start to believe that it will work in our favour more times than not.
Having said all that I'd also feel a lot more comfortable about the transparency and lack of manipulation of VAR if Sky had shown the now famous blue and red lines on a still in the build up to the rags second goal today because that looked bloody close to me ;)