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

Would you want VAR scrapped?


  • Total voters
    293
  • Poll closed .
Typically it’s not a shambles in Europe, it worked fine in the World Cup. It’s just our thick shit officials that can’t grasp it

Unless you follow European football particularly closely, you wouldn’t really know that.

For example. In Germany last week and barely mentioned in the UK press.

Dortmund player potentially fouls a Heidemheim player in the box.

Ref gives a penalty.

VAR tells him there was an offside before the foul.

Ref gives off side.

Dortmund substitute the player who’d made the foul.

VAR tells the ref he’s made a mistake. It wasn’t offside after all. It’s a penalty and a red card.

Ref gives the penalty but decides he can’t send the player off as he’s already been substituted. So books him instead.
 
He is the operator who actually generates the images and draws the lines the VAR requests. Also seemingly the only one of the three of them who seemed to notice anything was amiss when Tottenham took a free kick rather than kicked off to restart play. He had previously worked for Hawkeye it seems.

Think the confusion with the audio comes from the fact he starts appealing to “Ollie” when he realises the VAR and AVAR have become frozen in confusion. That “Ollie” is Michael Oliver, the 4th official.

He’s the only one who comes out of this with any credit. Perhaps they should sack the other two off and just leave it all to the only guy who seemed to know what he was doing.
Close but not quite. The guy you're referring to (and the one who can be heard in the clip) is the replay operator, Mo Abby.

Oli Kohout is the VAR hub operations executive (essentially Abby's boss). He contacted Abby on another line to tell him that the game needed to be stopped due to the mistake.

Then, as you say, things get even more farcical when the VAR seems to question who "Oli" is and the 4th official Michael Oliver chimes in.

It's telling that the only 2 who come out of it with any credit are the non-referee tech guys. The rest of them sound like a bunch of gormless fuckwits who have no idea what they're doing.
 
Unless you follow European football particularly closely, you wouldn’t really know that.

For example. In Germany last week and barely mentioned in the UK press.

Dortmund player potentially fouls a Heidemheim player in the box.

Ref gives a penalty.

VAR tells him there was an offside before the foul.

Ref gives off side.

Dortmund substitute the player who’d made the foul.

VAR tells the ref he’s made a mistake. It wasn’t offside after all. It’s a penalty and a red card.

Ref gives the penalty but decides he can’t send the player off as he’s already been substituted. So books him instead.
Thanks for telling me what I know and don’t know.
 
Is it any great surprise that officials who -

Can’t get defenders 10 yards away at free kicks

Can’t get defenders 10 yards away at corners

Spot foul throws

Stop blatant time wasting

And all the other simple things in their remit


Can’t manage to talk to each other over a walkie talkie
 
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Thanks for telling me what I know and don’t know.

I’ve no idea what you know or don’t know.

I keep reading people saying that VAR works seamlessly in every other country.

But the vast majority of people don’t watch any league other than their own country and have no idea if that’s true or not.
 
I’ve no idea what you know or don’t know.

I keep reading people saying that VAR works seamlessly in every other country.

But the vast majority of people don’t watch any league other than their own country and have no idea if that’s true or not.
No I didn’t - I said it seems to work well in the European games (uefa and CL) and the World Cup. But the standard of referees in our country, in my opinion, is fucking shocking.
 
No I didn’t - I said it seems to work well in the European games (uefa and CL) and the World Cup. But the standard of referees in our country, in my opinion, is fucking shocking.

You said “typically it works well in Europe” which I took to mean in European leagues.

But I was making a more a general point anyway, that a lot of people ( not necessarily you ) try to give the impression that it’s only in England where there’s any issues. Where as most people don’t watch foreign domestic football and wouldn’t know either way.
 
I don’t think they’ll ever ‘get it right’ … so much will always come down to interpretation , but I’d rather the ref has a second opinion/look than giving a blind judgement.

So many decisions are very fine margins that even with the benefit of replay there’s not clear evidence.

Interpretation?

What? Do you mean plain fucking English like it’s on or offside? lol

Give it up, it’s a clusterfuck and they have really upset a team in red now, trouble awaits for your mates in the VAR room
 
You said “typically it works well in Europe” which I took to mean in European leagues.

But I was making a more a general point anyway, that a lot of people ( not necessarily you ) try to give the impression that it’s only in England where there’s any issues. Where as most people don’t watch foreign domestic football and wouldn’t know either way.
It’s not about whether there are any issues elsewhere, it’s the comparison of standards. I watched most games in the World Cup and for me the standard was so much better than in our league, same in the CL. IN MY OPINION, the refs in England are very poor, their ability to manage a game is awful, and based on VAR transcripts their communication with each other is shocking; I can only imagine how bad it is with the players. If I compare the clarity of communications with rugby union, rugby league and cricket officials, I find them worlds apart
 
It’s not about whether there are any issues elsewhere, it’s the comparison of standards. I watched most games in the World Cup and for me the standard was so much better than in our league, same in the CL. IN MY OPINION, the refs in England are very poor, their ability to manage a game is awful, and based on VAR transcripts their communication with each other is shocking; I can only imagine how bad it is with the players. If I compare the clarity of communications with rugby union, rugby league and cricket officials, I find them worlds apart

Fair enough. Not asking you to change your opinion.

Although it may be worth pointing out that probably the highest profile VAR fuck up so far came at the last World Cup in the France, Tunisia game, when the VAR broke protocol to give an off side after the referee had both restarted play and then blown the final whistle.
 
It’s not about whether there are any issues elsewhere, it’s the comparison of standards. I watched most games in the World Cup and for me the standard was so much better than in our league, same in the CL. IN MY OPINION, the refs in England are very poor, their ability to manage a game is awful, and based on VAR transcripts their communication with each other is shocking; I can only imagine how bad it is with the players. If I compare the clarity of communications with rugby union, rugby league and cricket officials, I find them worlds apart
I think the FIFA and UEFA versions of VAR are much closer to what we were all expecting it to be when it first arrived. It seems a lot more simple and hands off than the PL version, where they seem to want to dive into every minute detail.
 
They have issues with VAR all over Europe
Of course there are issues, but I see better refs at every CL game than I do at every PL game. Our refs and VAR officials can’t even communicate clearly with each other. In fact the useless cunts can’t even get defenders 10 yards away at free kicks and corners. Our refs and var officials are fucking shit
 
Klopp has literally said, nothing like this has ever happened before.

Is he:

a) thick
b) on the wind up
c) playing the victim card
d) all of the above
they got mouth piece spit onside can you all stop talking about other mistakes by officials cause its making us look more stupid nothing compares lol
 
Of course there are issues, but I see better refs at every CL game than I do at every PL game. Our refs and VAR officials can’t even communicate clearly with each other. In fact the useless cunts can’t even get defenders 10 yards away at free kicks and corners. Our refs and var officials are fucking shit

Although both UEFA and FIFA seem to think quite highly of our best officials.

Oliver and Taylor both did a World Cup Q/F and they both regularly get some of the biggest UEFA games.
 
I think the vast majority of football fans were originally in favour of VAR, essentially because we believed that it would reduce the number of mistakes.
From a City perspective, we'd suffered a few injustices, and many blues quoted the non-penalty for the lunge on Aguero by Ashley Young.

Five years later, I'm still not convinced that VAR would have corrected the referee's clear-and-obvious error. I simply believe that some VAR Officials would have given it, and some wouldn't.

In other words nothing has changed.

However, regardless of Liverpool's reaction, it's probably the one subject that unites all football fans. We all fell for the marketing and didn't read the small print.
 

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