@Dickie said:
If we think VAR is being used wrongly and I personally do, spare a thought for the poor team in Bundesliga 2 over this past weekend. I am sure someone of a more technical nature can post the clip, but in summary the attacking team had a shot which went about 10 yards wide of the goal. The defending teams substitutes were warming up behind the goal, as the ball is crossing the goal line one of the substitutes traps the ball and passes it back to the goalkeeper for the goal kick.
Anyone in favour of VAR might as well watch a game of FIFA with both sides set to be AI controlled. Remove all doubt (emotion and fun too), simply have a computer play out the result for you.
Or better still, just set up a spreadsheet to assign random scores for every match. There’s definitely not going to be any refereeing errors then and as long as the random number generator is sound then it’s Dev’s very definition of fair.
Nobody who goes to football matches goes in the hope of seeing a perfectly fair game of football. They go in the hope of seeing their team out-wit, out-smart and out-play the opposition. They want to see Tommy Mooney scare the shit out of some opposition teenager to the degree that he spends the rest of the game untackled, they want to see Joe Jacobson ruffle the hair of whoever he has just tripped enough times that that player reacts and gets booked, they want to cheer when the referee gets hit with the ball and falls over, they want to celebrate without a five minute delay when their team scores, and most importantly they want to celebrate even more when Gareth Ainsworth is awarded a goal when the ball has gone out for a goal kick and they want to remember that moment for ever. Once you take all of that out, it’s just some numbers.
By the way, glad to see @glasshalffull’s strongly worded opposition to VAR earlier in the thread. Every host, pundit and commentator I tend to see on TV seems far too scared of the powers that be to voice much dissent, which is a real shame as the only way this aberration will ever get binned is if those at the top of the game go public with their concerns.
Of all the perfectly valid arguments for and against VAR, it has always struck me that the weirdest one is the one that argues that football is only worth watching if the fat old bloke in black allows goals to be counted that shouldn't be and disallows goals that should stand. On his logic referees should be octagenarians with failing sight and no understanding of the rules. Then we can have even more fun from the game than we do now.
I think football is a much better game in its own right than he gives it credit for. It doesn't need refereeing mistakes to give it its excitement. Its the football itself that does that in my view.
Personally I think that short time delays are worth the cost in order to get the key decisions right. I understand those who argue that it is not a price worth paying. I don't understand those who seem to actively want key decisions to be wrong on a regular basis as it in their view enhances the game.
@DevC I’m unsure what your position is around whether short time delays are worth putting up with to ensure the match you’re not at is officiated correctly? I must have missed you posting an opinion on that.
No surprise though that you resort to trying to play the man (unsuccessfully in my view) rather than argue constructively your point of view.
I’ve already posted my point of view. You only need to scroll back a little to read it. I consider it basic ettiquette to not post the same opinion every 10 posts so that everyone is thoroughly sick of it. You’re entitled to you opinion that that is perfectly acceptable behaviour though.
Is it really your opinion that football is diminished without refereeing mistakes even if those mistakes could be eliminated without time delay?
Given that they apparently can’t be eliminated without time delay, this is yet another one of your demands for an answer to a hypothetical scenario that does nothing to enhance the debate and is solely designed to make you the centre of any discussion. Again. The rest of us are discussing reality here mate.
No I (without resorting to abuse) am simply trying to understand the substance of your objections.
You seemed to be arguing that refereeing errors were so fundamental to your enjoyment of the game that even if VAR delays could be eliminated, you would still oppose it reducing those errors. That is an interesting view if I have understood it correctly.
Of course you haven’t understood it, because doing so wouldn’t allow you to place yourself at the centre of everything. Point out where I said “ even if VAR delays could be eliminated“ please. If you can’t, then obviously that is the key part of the scenario that you have made up just to demand an answer to something that nobody except you has even considered. Stop trying to make everything about you. The rest of us are trying to have an interesting conversation.
If VAR worked perfectly football would be very much diminished in my view. Fortunately it isn’t and probably never will be and is currently adding mic hilarity to teams I don’t care about in a league I have only a passing interest in
@drcongo said:
Of course you haven’t understood it, because doing so wouldn’t allow you to place yourself at the centre of everything. Point out where I said “ even if VAR delays could be eliminated“ please. If you can’t, then obviously that is the key part of the scenario that you have made up just to demand an answer to something that nobody except you has even considered. Stop trying to make everything about you. The rest of us are trying to have an interesting conversation.
Your criticism of Dev seems overstated, Doctor. His is, it seems to me, a reasonable attempt to summarise what he sees as the root of one line of objection to VAR.
I had had the same thought myself, that some of those objecting to VAR seemed to be going so far as to say that football is actively better with potentially correctable mistakes uncorrected. This argument for human frailty to remain an intrinsic part of the game even when it could to some degree be removed is one I understand but do not agree with. I find myself rather frustrated with the Luddite-nature of some of the objections though rather more in sympathy with the line of argument that says that it is less the technology that is the problem but that the relatively subjective nature of the laws compared to other sports that use video technology is problematic. I'm perfectly content to use VAR for objective matters such as offside - and I do not remotely have a problem with offsides being given for the sake of a toe or a nose: if you're offside, you're offside, whether it's close or not - and open to its use for less easy matters so long as the grounds for use are clearly stated and communication with spectating parties is improved.
@DevC said:
Of all the perfectly valid arguments for and against VAR, it has always struck me that the weirdest one is the one that argues that football is only worth watching if the fat old bloke in black allows goals to be counted that shouldn't be and disallows goals that should stand. On his logic referees should be octagenarians with failing sight and no understanding of the rules. Then we can have even more fun from the game than we do now.
I think football is a much better game in its own right than he gives it credit for. It doesn't need refereeing mistakes to give it its excitement. Its the football itself that does that in my view.
Personally I think that short time delays are worth the cost in order to get the key decisions right. I understand those who argue that it is not a price worth paying. I don't understand those who seem to actively want key decisions to be wrong on a regular basis as it in their view enhances the game.
You really do make up some rubbish sometimes. Point me to the posts that describe what you are talking about in your first paragraph. I think you might have exaggerated your point a bit. Maybe needs a video referral.
This week the Irish hockey team got an awful video referral with one second to play and are now not going to the Tokyo Olympics. The Scotland cricket team missed out on the last World Cup after no video referral was used in their qualifier against the West Indies.
The point is that most stakes happen whatever is in place. Mistakes are part of the human condition, part of life and part of what makes sport so watchable.
Once more you focus on the delay caused by the system. You are the only person on here talking about that. You just fail to follow the arguments against this horrible system.
While I understand your point re offsides being absolute and fouls being subjective, ignoring the delays for a moment, would you not agree that referees can better make the subjective judgement of whether contact constitutes a foul with the benefit of actually seeing what happened rather than having to judge that in a splitsecond from a distance possibly with an obscured view?
@HCblue said:
Your criticism of Dev seems overstated, Doctor. His is, it seems to me, a reasonable attempt to summarise what he sees as the root of one line of objection to VAR.
You may not have noticed, but this is just his modus operandi. Take someone else’s post, make up something that they didn’t say, feign an inability to understand the thing he’s made up, and then demand that the original poster responds to what he’s made up. It’s a bit like how toddlers argue, but not as clever. Obviously this then gives him some kind of moral high ground where he can claim that anyone and everyone is “playing the man” when they ask not to be misquoted and misrepresented. Obviously he would also claim playing the man if anyone on here were to make up rubbish and attribute it to him. He gets to derail a thread again.
@DevC said:
I just wish football had less soul and less emotion. It would be much better if football was just a penalty shoot out without that boring ninety minutes of potential refereeing errors.
Why do you think football should be just a penalty shootout Dev?
I’ve just logged on. My heart sank when I saw that there were 74 (seventy four) new messages on this thread. Started to flick through. Same old same old. Got to dear old @DevC’s post of 11.02 am. Saw that there were two more pages and decided to log off.
My wife reminded me that I have started reading about a dozen books over the past year or two and have rarely got beyond the first 50 pages. It’s an odd quirk. Last week I started reading Camp David and I think I might persevere with that although I stumbled across Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty this afternoon and lots of favourable reviews by posh ‘papers and magazines have whetted my appetite.
I don't understand those who seem to actively want key decisions to be wrong on a regular basis as it in their view enhances the game.
The thing is Dev, they don’t get things wrong on a regular basis. As a crowd we may perceive that they get it wrong, but a lot of the time they are actually correct. When the decision is wrong, the joy/rage that follows is part of being a supporter and allows debate to ensue for years & that keeps the football supporter returning again and again. If a referee keeps getting the decisions wrong on a regular basis, conversely, that would also take the joy out and the crowds would stop going. The odd wrong decision is actually the fuel for rage and return, to appreciate that you have to attend on a regular basis and watch the team you support.
Trouble is that a wrong decision in the PL could potentially cost many, many millions to the business barons who are involved and that's why we have VAR. Money trumps enjoyment/supporters/tradition and the PL rules the world. I feel that, used in it's present form, VAR is a key threat to the game.
However, the generation or so of platform gamers that make up a significant proportion of the support base in football, may not see it that way. Take out the 'A' in VAR and you get VR (virtual reality) and I wonder if that is how many supporters (audience?) see the game nowadays.
I don't go keep going back to watch because of the controversy over questionable or wrong decisions. I go back in the hope my team will play successfully and maybe the whole event will be entertaining. The idea that it is otherwise, although I think I understand Ewan's point, is tending towards asking your way back into the Matrix.
What I particularly dislike about VAR is that they are trying to get every decision correct and that isn't how the use of VAR is written into the rules.
It's supposed to be used to overturn clear and obvious errors in relation to goals/penalties/red cards/ mistaken ID.
In my book, therefore, any 50/50 decision the on field referee has made should stand as ruled since by definition it's wouldn't be clear and obvious it was wrong.
This would please everybody. You'd still get the referee making mistakes which can be debated at length during/after the game. Meanwhile, the obvious Maradonna/Henryesque handball goals would be rightly disallowed etc..
What's not to like?
Once we have Dev's perfect robot administered game football pundits will be redundant and we can just have 'And now some music' for fifteen minutes at half-time on live games.
Comments
Anyone in favour of VAR might as well watch a game of FIFA with both sides set to be AI controlled. Remove all doubt (emotion and fun too), simply have a computer play out the result for you.
Or better still, just set up a spreadsheet to assign random scores for every match. There’s definitely not going to be any refereeing errors then and as long as the random number generator is sound then it’s Dev’s very definition of fair.
Nobody who goes to football matches goes in the hope of seeing a perfectly fair game of football. They go in the hope of seeing their team out-wit, out-smart and out-play the opposition. They want to see Tommy Mooney scare the shit out of some opposition teenager to the degree that he spends the rest of the game untackled, they want to see Joe Jacobson ruffle the hair of whoever he has just tripped enough times that that player reacts and gets booked, they want to cheer when the referee gets hit with the ball and falls over, they want to celebrate without a five minute delay when their team scores, and most importantly they want to celebrate even more when Gareth Ainsworth is awarded a goal when the ball has gone out for a goal kick and they want to remember that moment for ever. Once you take all of that out, it’s just some numbers.
There was a big cheer on Saturday when one of the referee’s assistants fell over.
Was it a dive?
As there should be.
Timewasting B@stards
By the way, glad to see @glasshalffull’s strongly worded opposition to VAR earlier in the thread. Every host, pundit and commentator I tend to see on TV seems far too scared of the powers that be to voice much dissent, which is a real shame as the only way this aberration will ever get binned is if those at the top of the game go public with their concerns.
Of all the perfectly valid arguments for and against VAR, it has always struck me that the weirdest one is the one that argues that football is only worth watching if the fat old bloke in black allows goals to be counted that shouldn't be and disallows goals that should stand. On his logic referees should be octagenarians with failing sight and no understanding of the rules. Then we can have even more fun from the game than we do now.
I think football is a much better game in its own right than he gives it credit for. It doesn't need refereeing mistakes to give it its excitement. Its the football itself that does that in my view.
Personally I think that short time delays are worth the cost in order to get the key decisions right. I understand those who argue that it is not a price worth paying. I don't understand those who seem to actively want key decisions to be wrong on a regular basis as it in their view enhances the game.
@DevC I’m unsure what your position is around whether short time delays are worth putting up with to ensure the match you’re not at is officiated correctly? I must have missed you posting an opinion on that.
As far as I know you dont regularly go to matches at which VAR is present either.
No surprise though that you resort to trying to play the man (unsuccessfully in my view) rather than argue constructively your point of view.
Is it really your opinion that football is diminished without refereeing mistakes even if those mistakes could be eliminated without time delay?
I’ve already posted my point of view. You only need to scroll back a little to read it. I consider it basic ettiquette to not post the same opinion every 10 posts so that everyone is thoroughly sick of it. You’re entitled to you opinion that that is perfectly acceptable behaviour though.
Given that they apparently can’t be eliminated without time delay, this is yet another one of your demands for an answer to a hypothetical scenario that does nothing to enhance the debate and is solely designed to make you the centre of any discussion. Again. The rest of us are discussing reality here mate.
No I (without resorting to abuse) am simply trying to understand the substance of your objections.
You seemed to be arguing that refereeing errors were so fundamental to your enjoyment of the game that even if VAR delays could be eliminated, you would still oppose it reducing those errors. That is an interesting view if I have understood it correctly.
Of course you haven’t understood it, because doing so wouldn’t allow you to place yourself at the centre of everything. Point out where I said “ even if VAR delays could be eliminated“ please. If you can’t, then obviously that is the key part of the scenario that you have made up just to demand an answer to something that nobody except you has even considered. Stop trying to make everything about you. The rest of us are trying to have an interesting conversation.
If VAR worked perfectly football would be very much diminished in my view. Fortunately it isn’t and probably never will be and is currently adding mic hilarity to teams I don’t care about in a league I have only a passing interest in
Your criticism of Dev seems overstated, Doctor. His is, it seems to me, a reasonable attempt to summarise what he sees as the root of one line of objection to VAR.
I had had the same thought myself, that some of those objecting to VAR seemed to be going so far as to say that football is actively better with potentially correctable mistakes uncorrected. This argument for human frailty to remain an intrinsic part of the game even when it could to some degree be removed is one I understand but do not agree with. I find myself rather frustrated with the Luddite-nature of some of the objections though rather more in sympathy with the line of argument that says that it is less the technology that is the problem but that the relatively subjective nature of the laws compared to other sports that use video technology is problematic. I'm perfectly content to use VAR for objective matters such as offside - and I do not remotely have a problem with offsides being given for the sake of a toe or a nose: if you're offside, you're offside, whether it's close or not - and open to its use for less easy matters so long as the grounds for use are clearly stated and communication with spectating parties is improved.
You really do make up some rubbish sometimes. Point me to the posts that describe what you are talking about in your first paragraph. I think you might have exaggerated your point a bit. Maybe needs a video referral.
This week the Irish hockey team got an awful video referral with one second to play and are now not going to the Tokyo Olympics. The Scotland cricket team missed out on the last World Cup after no video referral was used in their qualifier against the West Indies.
The point is that most stakes happen whatever is in place. Mistakes are part of the human condition, part of life and part of what makes sport so watchable.
Once more you focus on the delay caused by the system. You are the only person on here talking about that. You just fail to follow the arguments against this horrible system.
Thank you for your post @HCblue .
While I understand your point re offsides being absolute and fouls being subjective, ignoring the delays for a moment, would you not agree that referees can better make the subjective judgement of whether contact constitutes a foul with the benefit of actually seeing what happened rather than having to judge that in a splitsecond from a distance possibly with an obscured view?
You may not have noticed, but this is just his modus operandi. Take someone else’s post, make up something that they didn’t say, feign an inability to understand the thing he’s made up, and then demand that the original poster responds to what he’s made up. It’s a bit like how toddlers argue, but not as clever. Obviously this then gives him some kind of moral high ground where he can claim that anyone and everyone is “playing the man” when they ask not to be misquoted and misrepresented. Obviously he would also claim playing the man if anyone on here were to make up rubbish and attribute it to him. He gets to derail a thread again.
Why do you think football should be just a penalty shootout Dev?
I’ve just logged on. My heart sank when I saw that there were 74 (seventy four) new messages on this thread. Started to flick through. Same old same old. Got to dear old @DevC’s post of 11.02 am. Saw that there were two more pages and decided to log off.
My wife reminded me that I have started reading about a dozen books over the past year or two and have rarely got beyond the first 50 pages. It’s an odd quirk. Last week I started reading Camp David and I think I might persevere with that although I stumbled across Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty this afternoon and lots of favourable reviews by posh ‘papers and magazines have whetted my appetite.
Goodnight.
I gave up trying to read Camp David very quickly. He has one of those inpenetrable poker faces.
Very good @lx1
He do make I larf.
Good morning. Anyone for VAR or TMO?
Can we not just put some of the VAR money into having professional referees for every match in the league and training them better?
I don't understand those who seem to actively want key decisions to be wrong on a regular basis as it in their view enhances the game.
The thing is Dev, they don’t get things wrong on a regular basis. As a crowd we may perceive that they get it wrong, but a lot of the time they are actually correct. When the decision is wrong, the joy/rage that follows is part of being a supporter and allows debate to ensue for years & that keeps the football supporter returning again and again. If a referee keeps getting the decisions wrong on a regular basis, conversely, that would also take the joy out and the crowds would stop going. The odd wrong decision is actually the fuel for rage and return, to appreciate that you have to attend on a regular basis and watch the team you support.
Trouble is that a wrong decision in the PL could potentially cost many, many millions to the business barons who are involved and that's why we have VAR. Money trumps enjoyment/supporters/tradition and the PL rules the world. I feel that, used in it's present form, VAR is a key threat to the game.
However, the generation or so of platform gamers that make up a significant proportion of the support base in football, may not see it that way. Take out the 'A' in VAR and you get VR (virtual reality) and I wonder if that is how many supporters (audience?) see the game nowadays.
I don't go keep going back to watch because of the controversy over questionable or wrong decisions. I go back in the hope my team will play successfully and maybe the whole event will be entertaining. The idea that it is otherwise, although I think I understand Ewan's point, is tending towards asking your way back into the Matrix.
What I particularly dislike about VAR is that they are trying to get every decision correct and that isn't how the use of VAR is written into the rules.
It's supposed to be used to overturn clear and obvious errors in relation to goals/penalties/red cards/ mistaken ID.
In my book, therefore, any 50/50 decision the on field referee has made should stand as ruled since by definition it's wouldn't be clear and obvious it was wrong.
This would please everybody. You'd still get the referee making mistakes which can be debated at length during/after the game. Meanwhile, the obvious Maradonna/Henryesque handball goals would be rightly disallowed etc..
What's not to like?
Once we have Dev's perfect robot administered game football pundits will be redundant and we can just have 'And now some music' for fifteen minutes at half-time on live games.