VAR thread 2022/23

[BlueHammer85]

Considering how inconsistent and downright farcical the standard of refereeing is there is no way we can remove VAR. The blatant things they are missing wouldn't get resolved. We're seeing inconsistencies and that's where the issue is at the moment. There needs to be a specific team at VAR that operate it every week. You shouldn't have refs interchanging between onfield roles and VAR roles. There has to be independent people running the system. There's a hierarchy within refereeing and younger refs will bow to their superiors which isn't right but is to be expected.

There should be logic and common sense applied as well to clarify rules on handball's/penalties etc. It's a game played at a high pace, there will be some mistakes and inconsistencies as a result. But there shouldn't be so many game to game, week to week.

An added issue is games like derbies or at Anfield last weekend. The ref wants to let the game flow, knowing there's an edge. That's fine. If the ref had have been fully in control then Foden's goal counts. But then you have a system that spots a foul. And it was a foul in isolation. But it wasn't one that the ref was willing to award in a game played at high pace with a lot of 50/50 challenges. So the goal should have stood on that basis. That was Pep's issue. But with VAR unfortunately it was rightly ruled out. Really that decision should have been for the ref to come and look at - with VAR appreciating he'd let a few of those go.

VAR will always have issues, and those issues exist in other sports like cricket and rugby too. The difference is they're less often match-defining and there's better communication of decisions and a respect that things aren't always 100% correct. In football we'll always see one set of fans moaning, as has always been the case. But without VAR that's still the case and more decisions would be missed in my opinion.

For me the biggest issue is this pitchside monitor. You know if the ref goes to that what it means. So why does the ref need to go and look?! Why did the ref have to look to see Bernardo get tripped up? Why didn't he go and look at the Haaland one? Funnily enough I thought the Bernardo one was soft in fact, he was looking for it. And the Haaland one should have been given.

Good post

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

When people are involved in a cover up that could potentially ruin them if it ever came out, there’s always a very good reason why they think it’s worth the risk.

I’m struggling to think of any reason they could have for secretly listening in on Gary and Carra’s ramblings and denying it?

It's not just individuals who will be ruined. If it ever came out it could potentially call into question the legitimacy of PL titles as well as prize money for league placement. We are talking £BILLIONS!!!

At this point in time it's almost too big to fail, so you can understand why they have been so reluctant to admit 'mistakes' have been made. It has the potential to bring the whole thing crashing down.

 

[Paladin]

And of those 74% who want to keep it with changes, 73% want the changes to be to stop screwing over the team they support.

And I'm in the 1% that wants the changes to screw over United and Liverpool.

 

[eyalluvitt]

Dunk missed the ball and took out Bernie. Bernie may of well been cute, but if you miss the ball and wipe the player out it is a pen for me.

Cute like Arry Kane is every week, I feel if anything we are too honest as a team, the more piss boiling we can do, the better

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

The only reason we have VAR is because people don't accept the debatable nature of those decisions.

Fans not accepting certain contentious decisions was part of the passion of the sport. Being upset at a bad call during a knock down drag out match is really a sign that fans are fully engaged in the match. If a ref makes a bad call, it's perfectly normal and a sign of a healthy sport for fans to be upset by the call. And to carry on about it afterwards if the result doesn't go your way. That's what we're supposed to do, it shows you have a good memory, it shows you're fully invested in what you believe is fairness on the pitch. What happens then is that after the match, the referee reviews the film and he may realize that he made a mistake (if he did) which causes him to be a better referee in future matches. That's how it works.

The whole idea that it's a problem for fans to react to contentious decisions is idealistic rubbish. That's supposed to be there, that's part of the passion!! The people behind VAR were thinking : hey, we can eliminate this "occasional" controversy. No!! That's what fans need when a match doesn't go their way. They need an outlet, and excuse for why their team lost. Sometimes fans go overboard, but that's all part of it! That's a fan's right to be able to call out bad decisions and remember certain decisions that went against them. That "occasional" controversy that used to exist is literally part of the charm of the sport. When a bad call goes against your team, it sucks, BUT when that happens, any bad decision has consequences. Sometimes a bad call happens during a match with enough time still for your team to overcome that adversity and fight back to win or draw. And sometimes it even creates legendary moments.

I'm not tying to act like it's a fun experience when a bad call costs your team a match, but it's not even close to as bad as this situation we have now with VAR where pretty much every match nowadays drives you mad because you can't fully live in the moment anymore and that's really the best part about football, the moment that the ball hits the back of the net. That unmitigated jubilation is gone, and that's everything to a fan. Before VAR when a contentious decision happened, rarely was it such a howler that you couldn't cope with it. When it happened, it was something to be outraged about, it was something to talk about, but the feeling that your team were wronged with a decision sometimes has a way of bringing a fanbase together even more. It's something to remind your rival friend of the time they won a match that they shouldn't have because of a bad call, it's something you would tease about at the pub. It's part of the social construct of football, and it ends up being part of history and part of the storyline heading into the next match between those teams. What I've found is as undone as you feel in the moment of a bad call going against you team that costs you a match, once the dust settles, it only increases your passion for the future, your looking forward to that next match.

The problem with VAR is you no longer get that feeling of looking forward to the next match as much because you know VAR is there which will cause additional disruptions and more controversy on an ongoing basis. When a bad decision happened in the past, before VAR, the referee would have that on their conscience and it my even cause him to give your team a break in a future match. It may not, and I'm not one of those people who say decisions always used to even out over the course of the season, but sometimes it did. And even if it doesn't, it's often something that a team can overcome, either in the match or over the course of the season. That occasional feeling of being wronged is not worth this, what we have now is an ongoing feeling of being wronged and annoyed. More controversy, more unnatural stoppages, and an ongoing heightened sense of nerves is not better than the rare passion inducing howler. VAR creates a bottomless passionless pit of nothingness and robs a match of its soul.

 

[TheBeautifulGame]

Considering how inconsistent and downright farcical the standard of refereeing is there is no way we can remove VAR. The blatant things they are missing wouldn't get resolved. We're seeing inconsistencies and that's where the issue is at the moment.

The standard of refereeing before VAR was not inconsistent and downright farcical though!

All of the inconsistencies that we're experiencing nowadays are due to VAR. The changes to the law (i.e. handball) are all VAR-induced changes that have created confusion. Before VAR, we all somehow knew what a handball was and the understanding of what a handball was required a sophistication and experience of being familiar with the sport. So a Father would be able to explain what a handball was to his son, who wouldn't know right way that sometimes if it hit the hand it wasn't a handball.

All of that sophistication for how fans knew the sport, how the laws made sense and just little things that fans knew from watching football all their lives has all completely gone up in smoke with VAR.

This has become like an entire new sport under VAR with no sense of what anything is anymore. We knew what a handball was before VAR. That didn't need to be changed, it only was changed to accommodate VAR. We knew (generally speaking) what warranted a yellow card or a red card. Now it's like a yellow card or a red card can be anything, depending on what side of the bed the referee and the VAR goons woke up on. So lets not fall into this trap of "well now we need VAR because the refereeing has become so bad". It's only gotten as bad as it has as a direct result of VAR!!

 

[Blue Mist]

Var showing why we need to keep it. West Ham v Bournemouth

 

[SebastianBlue]

Reminder: VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee (which is a person), so anyone arguing that the person making the decisions is separate from “VAR” does not understand how VAR works.

VAR is the referee in the booth, and the referee in the booth is VAR, by both the league definition/rules and the implementation of the rules.

Any assertion that does not begin with that *fact* is flawed from the start and is rightly discounted.

 

[SebastianBlue]

NBC analysts laying in to the decision to allow the West Ham goal. “I can’t believe they have deemed that as an accidental handball. It is clear and obvious that it was intentional. It gets worse with every angle you see.”

 

[BlueHammer85]

Var showing why we need to keep it. West Ham v Bournemouth

Yes another penalty we would not have got from the officials tonight

So Anfield last week and tonight … 2 stonewall penalty’s the refs would not have gave, thanks to VAR we got the correct decisions

Controversy for the Zouma goal, I was there and couldn’t tell so not seen that incident - hear Bournemouth manager not happy though