General officiating/rules

[OutByEaster?]

What we can't have is a situation where in every scenario, with every mistake that happens to every club, there's a precedent for demanding the tapes, conducting a review, for dark threats of legal action - if we get to there, we'll never get a game finished, we'll have to wait a week after every match for a board of inquiry to confirm it was okay. It's ridiculous, right now, all over the places where football is talked about; forums, twitter, the papers, radio shows, tv punditry, everywhere, everyone is raising every sort of injustice off the back of Liverpool's reaction to this mistake.

The next time Wolves or Brighton get a dodgy one, do you think they're going to say "Ah, it's okay we're just Wolves, we'll let this one go"? Of course not - if we let Liverpool set a precedent, every single club will be demanding an action, every single time there's an error - we'll get through fifty VAR officials a season, we'll need a special team at the FA to deal with the inquiries, we'll have games decided in meeting rooms and a tangle of red tape so big you'll be able to see it from space.

Fixing VAR is really important for the game, stopping Liverpool dragging this into some sort of quasi-legal action is, for me, more important still.

 

[blandy]

On 02/10/2023 at 08:40, Stevo985 said:

I think all the negatives of VAR MIGHT be worth it if it was well implemented and we were getting consistent, mostly correct decisions, throughout the league.

But we're not. There's literally no positives to outweigh the negatives.

If even offsides, which were the one thing they were getting correct all the time (dodgy interpretations of the law excluded) can't be relied on then what's the point?

Thing is, like with the Liverpool offside that wasn't over-ruled, by and large, while there's a lot of pfaff and noise, mostly VAR isn't making things worse = the Liverpool 'goal' was called offside by the match officials - so it's not like VAR wrongly disallowed a goal - it just failed to correct an incorrect on field decision. The man they had sent off - the ref gave just a yellow, so he'd have stayed on, but it was a genuine 50:50 call.

The big downside is basically when you score, you're never quite sure if it'll get rules out for some reason, so for people in the ground, that's the main drawback, I think. For everything else, there's still errors, and the numpties doing the Spurs Liverpool game were particularly negligent, but overall there are fewer incorrect decisions because of VAR.

It gets far too much focus and attention, IMO, because of TV - they love having something to drone on about.

[Stevo985]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

 

The big downside is basically when you score, you're never quite sure if it'll get rules out for some reason, so for people in the ground, that's the main drawback, I think. For everything else, there's still errors, and the numpties doing the Spurs Liverpool game were particularly negligent, but overall there are fewer incorrect decisions because of VAR.

Yeah I agree. And my argument was always that that would be worth it because we’d be getting the right decision the vast majority of the time. 
 

But there are too many glaring errors for that to be the case. So the positives don’t outweigh the negatives. Not by a long shot. 
 

I still think there’s a place in football for VAR, or video technology of some sort, but they need to rip this up and start again. It’s a shambles

[blandy]

Just now, Stevo985 said:

my argument was always that that would be worth it because we’d be getting the right decision the vast majority of the time. But there are too many glaring errors for that to be the case

I agree with the post, but on this bit, I dunno. I don't think there are that many "glaring" errors - if there's 1 a week on average, I'd be surprised. I accept there are "contentious" or "ones some people don't agree with". There's been over the past couple of seasons maybe 5 or so absolute howler games - Spurs Brighton, Spurs Liverpool, Man U wolves, but even then it's been quite often not correcting an on field error, rather than wrongly overruling a correct decision.

For some reason, the standard is just lower than it ought to be and the refs too interested in protecting their colleagues.

It seems (from a distance) to be better implemented almost everywhere else. Certainly internationals, which is the kind of level the Premier League ought to be matching.

[wishywashy]

 

 

[bannedfromHandV]

Sky sports playing the audio from the Liverpool non-goal.

I actually feel sorry for the refs and hope others have the same take away from hearing it.

[HongKongVillan]

Now Liverpool has successfully demanded a recording of events, shouldn't this mean football like rugby, should get to hear everything that's being discussed so it's transparent?

 

 

[rodders0223]

"I can't do anything."

You literally can. Whether it is in the rulebook or manual or not. You can use your initiative and your common sense and think under pressure and work out the different permutations in that short moment and just go "matey I **** up, I meant it is a goal. Blow your whistle and point to the spot."

That's what most intelligent people would have done in that situation. I've had to explain to my boss plenty of times I did X, Y, Z to push something through, get a result or the lesser of two evils.

 

...and now I'm reading all over socials, 'simple mistake feel bad for them'.

 

The miscommunication isn't the major issue. It's the complete lack of backbone or common sense. They're all cowards. 

Get rid of them.

[PieFacE]

15 minutes ago, wishywashy said:

 

 

Didn't listen to it all but managed to listen to the point where they realised they got it wrong. For how much people complain about how much VAR slows down the game, they are clearly rushing things here. 

Think people would accept how long VAR takes more if they could actually hear what's going on. This goes for people in grounds too. 

[bannedfromHandV]

3 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Didn't listen to it all but managed to listen to the point where they realised they got it wrong. For how much people complain about how much VAR slows down the game, they are clearly rushing things here. 

Think people would accept how long VAR takes more if they could actually hear what's going on. This goes for people in grounds too. 

Kaveh is beating the same drum on sky (it being a rushed job) - I actually disagree, I don’t think it was a time issue it was a simple communication problem. To be fair, over microphones and depending on accents, onside/offside sound pretty bloody similar.

[MrBlack]

Oh f... shows the genuine accident it was. Hope Liverpool feel good. 

Yes, it reflects a poor process, lack of concentration, and maybe even a lack of common sense.  But these things happen. Klopp moaning about VAR calls every week adding to the pressure they're under doesn't help. 

If the ref blows his whistle and gets called over to a monitor... he makes his box signal and does the cross arm thing then awards the goal I don't think many people are complaining after the ball has gone up and down the wing once.

Yes it's not what the process allows, but you can see why in the heat of the moment they don't highlight it to the onfield ref.  Whats he meant to do? He's then thinking about that instead of the game and the rules don't allow him to do anything. 

[bobzy]

9 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

"I can't do anything."

You literally can. Whether it is in the rulebook or manual or not. You can use your initiative and your common sense and think under pressure and work out the different permutations in that short moment and just go "matey I **** up, I meant it is a goal. Blow your whistle and point to the spot."

That's what most intelligent people would have done in that situation. I've had to explain to my boss plenty of times I did X, Y, Z to push something through, get a result or the lesser of two evils.

 

...and now I'm reading all over socials, 'simple mistake feel bad for them'.

 

The miscommunication isn't the major issue. It's the complete lack of backbone or common sense. They're all cowards. 

Get rid of them.

Enjoy all the retrospective pressures on decisions knowing that you can just change a decision “whenever”.

[MrBlack]

8 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

Didn't listen to it all but managed to listen to the point where they realised they got it wrong. For how much people complain about how much VAR slows down the game, they are clearly rushing things here. 

Think people would accept how long VAR takes more if they could actually hear what's going on. This goes for people in grounds too. 

Agreed, if you hear the VAR talking through the process... you're not there in silence ignorant of what's happening. Time won't seem as slow.

Edited October 3, 2023 by MrBlack

[OutByEaster?]

I think the audio shows pretty clearly it's a human error - the VAR wrongly assumed they were confirming a goal but they inadvertently "confirmed" a decision they thought was wrong.

Floodgates are open now- the league will have to make this sort of footage available for every decision.

 

[sharkyvilla]

6 minutes ago, HongKongVillan said:

Now Liverpool has successfully demanded a recording of events, shouldn't this mean football like rugby, should get to hear everything that's being discussed so it's transparent?

 

 

I think we should at least be able to hear the conversation between the ref and VAR when he is at the screen and I don't see any reason why we can't.  It would clarify things to everyone at the time as to the thinking behind the decision, whether people personally agree with it or not.  You'd think all the offside shenanigans will be sorted by the semi-automatic system and a lot quicker so you won't have as much play going on before the flag goes up.  

These are two easy ways of improving it.  Sometimes if a complete cock up still gets through, you can give each manager one referral per match too.

[OutByEaster?]

I think one of the linesmen immediately says "give it" (correctly) - I'm not sure if the VAR hears that and thinks it's confirming his call.

 

[bobzy]

2 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think the audio shows pretty clearly it's a human error - the VAR wrongly assumed they were confirming a goal but they inadvertently "confirmed" a decision they thought was wrong.

Floodgates are open now- the league will have to make this sort of footage available for every decision.

 

The sheer amount of people on the loop as well. No wonder things could get misinterpreted. 

[OutByEaster?]

I do wonder what would have happened if they'd had a VAR check that said offside, then stopped the game again to say goal. 

TV-wise I think people would understand that, in the stadium there would be a riot.

 

[OutByEaster?]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

The sheer amount of people on the loop as well. No wonder things could get misinterpreted. 

Yeah, it's very, very noisy isn't it.

The assistants shouldn't need to be constantly switched on - ask them when you need to - they've got a great big fluorescent f***ing flag if they want to grab your attention!

 

[sharkyvilla]

15 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

"I can't do anything."

You literally can. Whether it is in the rulebook or manual or not. You can use your initiative and your common sense and think under pressure and work out the different permutations in that short moment and just go "matey I **** up, I meant it is a goal. Blow your whistle and point to the spot."

That's what most intelligent people would have done in that situation. I've had to explain to my boss plenty of times I did X, Y, Z to push something through, get a result or the lesser of two evils.

 

...and now I'm reading all over socials, 'simple mistake feel bad for them'.

 

The miscommunication isn't the major issue. It's the complete lack of backbone or common sense. They're all cowards. 

Get rid of them.

Maybe they could have asked Spurs to let Liverpool walk the ball in the goal like Bielsa did with us.  It would take one hell of an act of sportsmanship on the part of Spurs.