Can't work out why the first Sheffield United goal was ruled out but the second wasn't. I thought the second one was more offside than the first. I guess they decided they just couldn't rule out two goals for such close offsides.It’s just not good enough is it?
Yesterday was the worst I’ve experienced it in the stadium. We’ve no idea what’s going on or what they’re looking at. Refs need microphones so we can hear them and they need to put the incidents on the screens. It’s all too secret.
Can't work out why the first Sheffield United goal was ruled out but the second wasn't. I thought the second one was more offside than the first. I guess they decided they just couldn't rule out two goals for such close offsides.
Supposedly the PL managers are meeting Mike Riley on Thursday for VAR discussions. Hopefully they can get some common sense to prevail but I'm massively skeptical.
The implementation is abysmal. They are taking far too long to make the decision and over turning things that are far too minuscule. The first Sheff Utd goal yesterday should have stood, like Son’s against Leicester should have.
Imo if they can’t make a decision within 60 seconds, then they should go with the original refs decision. If somethings clear and obvious, you’ll be able to tell within a minute. If you can’t then it can’t have made enough of a difference to the action.
Might as well do away with referees altogether if we're going to get every decision review.So I hear West ham conceded a goal yesterday from a corner that wasn't.
How simple would that be for VAR to overturn.
As it was against West Ham I'll allow it this time but some of the things they can't change are pathetic.
I've said it before and I'll stick by it, I still thing having a certain amount of "challenges" is the way to go. If you gave each team 1 challenge per game, which they keep if the challenge was successful, then it would basically limit VAR interventions to 2 per game in most instances.
It would be relatively self-policing because teams wouldn't challenge decisions unless they were almost certain that it would be overturned, so that solves the "clear and obvious" thing right away i.e. players who blatantly dived wouldn't appeal for the challenge because they'd risk losing their challenge for a genuine mistake later in the match, so would only challenge when they thought it was clear and obvious. Likewise you wouldn't have VAR reviewing all these idiotic "Was his nosehair offside?" decisions because nobody would challenge a call that was that close.
The only other criticism I've heard is that managers would use it to break up the play towards the end of the game. That is obviously a slight risk, but even if that was the case it would only happen a maximum of 1 time. You'd obviously have it so that the challenge was only looked at the next time the ball went out of play anyway, so you wouldn't be able to use it to break up an opposition attack. You could even have a review after the games and punish teams for making "frivolous challenges" clearly just for the sake of it at the end of the game by removing their challenge in the following game or something like that.
To me it seems like an absolute no-brainer because it would massively reduce the number of times VAR was used, and would mean that it was genuinely only used for cases where there was a high chance of there being a clear error, rather than for all these stupid 1mm offside decisions and stuff. It seems like that majority of people who are against this system are only against it because of some weird obsession with it seeming "too American", which is nonsense anyway because they have it in cricket anyway.
Ive seen this bandied about a fair bit but I just dont agree. I mean if Sheffied United had challenged the 'offside' goal yesterday well... it would still be considered offside and the issue remains about how pedantic the rule is. If Pep challenged today, it still wouldnt have been a penalty but the issue wasnt that it would have taken a minute or two but the rules themeselves.
I agree with you if all we are focussed on is the time taken rather than the accuracy of the decisions - is that what the objective is?
The discussion on VAR there needs to be clear separation of what is at the heart of the discussion - is it time taken or whether the decisions are correct or not?
In my view the time taken is too long and the rules themselves are ambiguous - so the whole challenge thing wouldnt resolve anything that VAR was supposed to resolve in the first instance because the rules themselves are inadequate.
I never said it would fix every issue with VAR Obviously it wouldn't fix the issues in terms of the poorly written rules, but that's a completely different point. They clearly need to rethink offsides and handballs but that's not really a VAR issue. VAR just highlights how stupid the rule is.
But to use the Sheffield goal as an example, it was not called offside by the referee so in my system it would've been a goal, unless Pochettino challenged the decision. It would then presumably have been overturned because of the pedantic rule, but the point is he almost certainly wouldn't have challenged the decision in the first place because it wasn't "clear and obvious" so even if we thought it was very slightly offside, most likely we wouldn't have wasted our challenge on such a close call. Thats the advantage of having challenges - VAR would only ever be used if a team thought there was a blatantly wrong decision
You could have a game with four sending offs all from wrongly awarded yellow cards decided by a corner awarded wrongly or a goal from a direct free kick given for a dive. All of which there's nothing VAR could change.Might as well do away with referees altogether if we're going to get every decision review.
Then nearly every single decision will be reviewed and the game will last another 2 hours.You could have a game with four sending offs all from wrongly awarded yellow cards decided by a corner awarded wrongly or a goal from a direct free kick given for a dive. All of which there's nothing VAR could change.
When major errors can still decide games what's the point?