VAR Discussion Thread - 2023/24 | PL clubs to vote on whether to scrap VAR (pg413)

[Aeromania]

And aren’t they supposed to be bringing in new technology that will determine when someone is offside a lot more quickly as of next season? I say keep VAR and keep embracing the technology. There is too much money involved in top flight football not to be doing this. I wouldn’t mind the referee’s watch being synchronised with a clock in the stadium and on television. Like in American sports. I think it’s a good idea.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

The element that I believe could be the biggest reason to scrap VAR altogether is referees subconsciously making less calls on field because they know VAR will rectify any errors.

That can never be removed.

 

[Tricky_Trev]

That is the epitome of 'clear and obvious'. That's what we were sold VAR on not this offside toenails bollocks we have now.

But ‘clear and obvious’ error was only ever a thing with SUBJECTIVE calls. Something like offside or whether the ball has crossed the line is matter of fact. It’s treated as being objective and doesn’t have to be a clear and obvious error. That was always the case when sold to us too.

 

[bluenova]

VAR needs to stay. The muppets using it just need to stop protecting their mates' embarrassment of getting decisions wrong by hiding behind this clear and obvious error bullshit. It's either a correct decision or not. Wouldn't want this shower of shite that masquerade as officials these days being given carte blanche to make things up unchecked on the field of play.

The problem is that a lot of penalty decisions aren't correct or not, they're subjective, and different people will disagree.

How many handballs do we argue over? How many times do we wonder if there was enough contact for a player to go down for a penalty?

Refs must be giving decisions they're 60% sure of all the time. VAR needs a higher bar than that. They can't be arguing that they think it's 60% the other way. VAR needs to be 90-100%. If there's debate, they need to stay well out it (unless the ref says he sees something specific that didn't happen, in which case let the ref make watch a replay and make a new decision).

 

[youngbob]

I'm no VAR fan, but scrapping it and going back to how it was before, is not a step forward at all. Fans have short memories. Remember Henry's handball against Ireland, Graham Poll's 3 yellow cards, Nani's goal against Spurs, Mike Riley's officiating in the game at Old Trafford which ended Arsenal's 49 game unbeaten run? You can go on all day. VAR was the consequence of all these terrible refereeing decisions. One phrase that I remember hearing ad nauseum was 'If the technology is there, why don't we use it?' as regards helping referees. Football is a notoriously hard game to officiate, fouls can be very subjective. Was there contact? Yes. How much contact? A little. Enough to make him go down? Well, erm, kind of, but he could have stayed on his feet... Everyone can have a different opinion on the same foul, technology or not, that is never going to change. If VAR is voted against, it will only be a matter of time before we get a huge refereeing blooper on the level of the Hand of God, or Schumacher nearly killing Battiston, and we'll be back to right where we started. Flip flopping back and forth is just going to make the game farcical.

But as bad as those moments were pre-VAR, we still have moments which are that glaringly awful even with VAR. The goal not given to Sheffield United against Villa, the Arsenal-Brentford fiasco, all the nonsense handballs given in the Champions League, the Spurs-Liverpool non-offside, all the injuries that have come after obvious offsides haven't been called, countless other incidents in other leagues that we don't hear about every weekend. VAR wasn't a consequence of bad refereeing, it was a consequence of Sky being able to slow down replays and analyse them in detail that we'd never seen before. It then suited Sky to turn everything into a conspiracy or a soap opera plotline, so it got to the point where people lost the ability to just accept mistakes and move on. Everything suddenly required a "response", "something must be done about this", etc. It became an ethical matter to get refereeing decisions right. Instead of just accepting that sometimes it doesn't go your way, managers and club officials got increasingly bitter and angry about every little mistake and governing bodies ushered in VAR without asking match-going fans, without asking players, etc. VAR's for people in suits, people who watch on TV hundreds of miles away, and people like them lot at AFTV.

VAR has proved that football and refereeing are both incapable of finding the absolute truth that everyone's after. Offsides are offsides, and goals are goals, so I'm in favour of semi-automated technology being used to work out binary things like those. But fouls and handballs and throw-ins and that kind of stuff, it's pretty obvious that looking at incidents five and six times, stopping the game, getting the lads at Stockley Park replaying the footage, it hasn't made anything better or easier. Because it's all subjective. Look at the Doku thing with Mac Allister against Liverpool earlier this season - if that gets given as a foul you can sort of see why, if it doesn't get given (which it didn't) you can also sort of see why. As you've said already, VAR has proved that football is full of stuff that's not 100% clear either way and it would be better to try and understand the referee's decision instead of accusing them of conspiracies and bribery and whatever else. If referees want to use the screens to have a second look at incidents in the future, then fine, but that should be their call. VAR, and especially Stockley Park, has made the experience of football worse and it hasn't improved refereeing enough to justify what football has lost. Turns out humans are just humans, no matter how much technology we use to get ourselves closer to playing God. If, as you've said, everyone can have a different opinion on a foul then what's the point of VAR wasting so much time to reach the same results?

All in favour of keeping goalline technology and bringing in semi-automated offsides (although I think the offside rule should be changed), and maybe things like off-the-ball incidents should be kept under someone else's jurisdiction, but I'm absolutely in favour of dumping VAR except for those three things. Sometimes referees just get it wrong regardless of whether they look at things once or 10 times. I'd rather live in a world where referees get 8/10 decisions correct and I can still celebrate goals, and games actually finish on time, instead of living in a world where referees get 9/10 decisions right but I can't properly celebrate goals and games regularly go beyond 100 minutes. It's not worth it.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

But as bad as those moments were pre-VAR, we still have moments which are that glaringly awful even with VAR. The goal not given to Sheffield United against Villa, the Arsenal-Brentford fiasco, all the nonsense handballs given in the Champions League, the Spurs-Liverpool non-offside, all the injuries that have come after obvious offsides haven't been called, countless other incidents in other leagues that we don't hear about every weekend. VAR wasn't a consequence of bad refereeing, it was a consequence of Sky being able to slow down replays and analyse them in detail that we'd never seen before. It then suited Sky to turn everything into a conspiracy or a soap opera plotline, so it got to the point where people lost the ability to just accept mistakes and move on. Everything suddenly required a "response", "something must be done about this", etc. It became an ethical matter to get refereeing decisions right. Instead of just accepting that sometimes it doesn't go your way, managers and club officials got increasingly bitter and angry about every little mistake and governing bodies ushered in VAR without asking match-going fans, without asking players, etc. VAR's for people in suits, people who watch on TV hundreds of miles away, and people like them at AFTV.

VAR has proved that football and refereeing are both incapable of finding the absolute truth that everyone's after. Offsides are offsides, and goals are goals, so I'm in favour of semi-automated technology being used to work out binary things like those. But fouls and handballs and throw-ins and that kind of stuff, it's pretty obvious that looking at incidens five and six times, stopping the game, getting the lads at Stockley Park replaying the footage, it hasn't made anything better or easier. Because it's all subjective. Look at the Doku thing with Mac Allister against Liverpool earlier this season - if that gets given as a foul you can sort of see why, if it doesn't get given (which it didn't) you can also sort of see why. As you've said already, VAR has proved that football is full of stuff that's not 100% clear either way and it would be better to try and understand the referee's decision instead of accusing them of conspiracies and bribery and whatever else. If referees want to use the screens to have a second look at incidents in the future, then fine, but that should be their call. VAR, and especially Stockley Park, has made the experience of football worse and it hasn't improved refereeing enough to justify what football has lost. Turns out humans are just humans, no matter how much technology we use to get ourselves closer to playing God. If, as you've said, everyone can have a different opinion on a foul then what's the point of VAR wasting so much time to reach the same results?

All in favour of keeping goalline technology and bringing in semi-automated offsides (although I think the offside rule should be changed), and maybe things like off-the-ball incidents should be kept under someone else's jurisdiction, but I'm absolutely in favour of dumping VAR except for those three things. Sometimes referees just get it wrong regardless of whether they look at things once or 10 times. I'd rather live in a world where referees get 8/10 decisions correct and I can still celebrate goals, and games actually finish on time, instead of living in a world where referees get 9/10 decisions right but I can't properly celebrate goals and games regularly go beyond 100 minutes. It's not worth it.

Sky are reporting that before VAR, 82% or decisions were correct and at the moment it’s 96%.

The debate is whether you want as many correct decisions as possible vs loss of spontaneity where goal checks are necessary.

 

[youngbob]

Sky are reporting that before VAR, 82% or decisions were correct and at the moment it’s 96%.

The debate is whether you want as many correct decisions as possible vs loss of spontaneity where goal checks are necessary.

I reject the premise that a subjective decision can be deemed "correct".

But, disregarding that for a second - that world pre-VAR was also a world without these semi-automatic offsides we have now. If we go back to a world without VAR but with those semi-auto offsides you'd be looking at decreasing that margin of difference by quite a considerable amount. It was fine to want VAR before it came in (I wanted it, certainly) but it's also fine to now admit that VAR hasn't had the desired effect and that the product is worse as a result of its implementation. If referees only get 89% of decisions "correct" in the future, rather than 96% as they apparently do now, then I'd say it's worth it to be able to celebrate goals again without some random flick or deflection three phases back ruling it out.

 

[cibaman]

I’d keep var for offsides, with a commitment to invest in the technology to automate it and speed it up. Scrap it For subjective decisions

 

[youngbob]

I’d keep var for offsides, with a commitment to invest in the technology to automate it and speed it up. Scrap it For subjective decisions

It's not being used for offsides next season anyway. Champions League-style semi-automated offsides being used instead.

 

[cibaman]

Sky are reporting that before VAR, 82% or decisions were correct and at the moment it’s 96%.

The debate is whether you want as many correct decisions as possible vs loss of spontaneity where goal checks are necessary.

Im curious how they calculate the stats. It seems that when the 5 person review panel releases its findings on controversial calls they say something like “the panel agreed by 3-2….”. That’s still very subjective