Watford (a) post-match

[cibaman]

You get a similar issue in cricket where TV footage is used to try to show whether a ball has grounded before a catch is taken. Rolling the footage on frame by frame does not always give the clearest picture of whether a catch was taken cleanly.

I suppose VAR might work well if, like most umpire reviews or decision in rugby, the question is 'is there evidence to justify overturning the on-field decision', but if VAR involves simply passing the buck, it might be more difficult.

Its also a big problem in cricket when adjudicating on tight stumpings and run outs. They often cannot get the shot showing the wicket being broken and the batsmen grounding his bat to precisely match up. They'll show one shot with the wicket not quite being broken and the batsmen out of his ground, followed by another when the batsman has already grounded his bat but the bails are already off. The 3rd umpire then has to guess whether the batsman had made his ground when the bails first came off.

 

[Chris in London]

Thanks Chris,

When I watch athletics the finish line of say the 100 metres is in slow motion with its many fps value to get exact timing to coincide with the actual frame when the athlete crosses the line.
Similar situation with horse racing because it allows accuracy for results.

I suppose under normal circumstances there is no harm or potential error in using normal footage for offside decision checks but for very close decisions it cannot be definitive because of the limitations you describe.
In fact the situation becomes just as if it was in real time with the linesmans eye which sees things at about 24 fps then the brain processing the in between frames as a continuous event which will vary from person to person using anticipation skills.

For the TV channel to claim accuracy with a single frame from a non slow motion video is wrong so perhaps they should show the immediate frame either side of the so called accurate one to explain their conclusion and maybe then some will agree and others will not if it is that close.

Like a photo finish in racing or athletics, or as cibaman says a run out in cricket, offside decisions in elite level football are actually taking place at a speed that makes it too fast for the human eye to determine with complete accuracy you can go further and say they are close to the point where TV slow motion replays can scarcely tell either. In fact, offside calls are if anything worse, because in athletics and cricket you are dealing with a fixed point, namely a finishing line/crease. In football that becomes a moving point, namely the last defender, which could be moving towards the goalline or indeed away from it as an offside trap is sprung. So it is no surprise that linesmen get it wrong - the surprise if anything is that they get it right as often as they do. But when it comes to these split second decisions, there is an extent to which they are just making educated guesses, and will inevitably get them wrong to a certain extent.

That margin for error seems to me to be part and parcel of the game. When all is said and done, these laws were drawn up when saturation TV coverage and super slo-mo replays had not been thought of, let alone in widespread use. So apart from those cases of clear errors not being given (e.g. Walker at Spurs last season) when the marginal calls go for you or against you there is a need for a degree of phlegmatic stoicism either way. You take the good calls and the bad together.

But it does throw up two issues that shouldn't just be taken on the chin.

The first is the extent to which, accepting entirely that human error is part of the game, certain teams benefit from that margin of error more than others. IIRC last season the rags, to take one example, benefited from 10 'offside' goals that should not, if the TV replays are to be believed, have stood, and 8 legitimate goals against them that should have stood but were wrongly (again if the TV footage is to be believed) ruled out. Bearing in mind the number of games the rags drew last season that is quite an error. This is not the place to discuss (a) if that conscious or subconscious bias exists at all, and (b) if it does the reason for it. It is just to point out the scope for the playing field to be tilted in a meaningful way in one direction or another. I remember a few seasons ago Sterling, playing for Liverpool, was called offside - wrongly, it seemed front he replays - and a goal disallowed in a game we went on to win 2-1. That error was shown on a continuous loop by Sky for a long time after the game. I don't recall these game changing decisions in the rags' favour getting the same treatment last year.

The second issue it throws up is how we as a club are treated in the media. The narrative that has come out of the media since Saturday has unquestionably been 'it's only Watford, Watford should have had a penalty, and two of City's goals were offside anyway.' Most have acknowledged that these matters would not have affected the overall result, but they are being used to tarnish the victory. Again, whether this is done deliberately by the media, and whether it matters even if it the media are underplaying the win, are separate matters that have threads of their own. However it clearly encourages that narrative for TV replays to 'prove' a goal is offside and shouldn't have been given (or a goal was wrongly ruled out) when in fact the TV footage, as Saturday demonstrates, 'proves' nothing of the sort.

 

[mccity]

that burnley match,i didn't enjoy at all kept on thinking it was going to get called off,it was absolutely pissing down hahahahaha

I remember that. After we were 3 up after 7 minutes or so I thought this'd be 10. Then in the 2nd half I was just begging for the clock to hit 75 minutes.

That feels like a City thing.

 

[Grassland Blue]

The goals counted.
It's not before time that we were due a couple of marginal decisions in our favour.
We won well and whether 4 or 6 nil is really irrelevant.

 

[Vic]

Never looked at it like that before. I always preferred when the rule was changed to 'There had to be fresh air between the attacker & defender for it to be called offside'.

There never was such a rule change. The only change (years ago) was that you were offside if level and now you're onside if level.
The daylight thing was just a ref saying on tv that it was easy to decide offside if you could see daylight between players. The media turned it into a rule that never was. Took the FA two years to persuade them it was nonsense.

 

[City Raider]

I'm pretty sure that when Gundogan walks up to Kun after penalty given, you can see Kun mouth 'Raz'. That was before any player turned to the bench. If true what a ledge, 2 goals away and thinking of others.

Mendy confirmed it was Agueros idea for Sterling to take penalty. Ledge

 

[i kne albert davy]

There never was such a rule change. The only change (years ago) was that you were offside if level and now you're onside if level.
The daylight thing was just a ref saying on tv that it was easy to decide offside if you could see daylight between players. The media turned it into a rule that never was. Took the FA two years to persuade them it was nonsense.

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