I'd personally much prefer the occasional seething over some appalling decision, as you get a few calls your way from time to time too. That's half the beauty, the outrage, the conversations and debate about it.
Luckily, it won't affect us, unless we play a Premier league team away in the cup? I think that's right?
But it's certain they won't just bin it. We're already behind the times with other sports and leagues, we're not now going to go backwards ( as they see it). They'll just have to improve the use. Getting the ref to view a monitor seems a much better way than some phantom random of miscellaneous allegiance sitting in a bunker somewhere.
Just to answer a couple of these points and then perhaps best to let this lie.
@EwanHoosaami , I apologise if I misunderstood your point. I genuinely now don't understand what you were trying to say. perhaps you could just clarify. If it were possible to correct most refereeing errors without significant delay, would you choose to?
@eric_plant , the answer to your question, were there key refereeing decisions in the live matches i have seen that I think were wrong and that I would like to have seen corrected
yes - strangely enough all against the team I wanted to win.
@drcongo , I agree that nothing mankind has designed is ever completely infallible. Do you agree with me though that technology is far more likely to get a marginal offside decision right than the human eye in live time?
@EwanHoosaami , I don't buy your argument that things should be the same at all levels I am afraid. Simply not realistic. At my local club, the pitch is nowhere near as smooth as it would be at league standard and the floodlights nowhere near as strong. does that mean that premier league games should be played in poorly lit bumpy pitched stadiums with minimal facilities for fans - of course not. The best practically available facilities should be available for all games but of course they will vary by level.
No idea whether these statistics are right but apparently the best view we have is that in 120 matches, 29 critical match changing wrong decisions have been corrected, so roughly 1 in 4 matches has not been spoiled by a referee getting a key decision wrong.
The average delay for those 29 decisions is apparently 1 minute 15 secs. That feels like worth waiting.
the total time spent reviewing decisions has apparently been 400 minutes, an average of 3.5 minutes per match although some of that time has been while the game has been in progress and hence not visible. I think that is a little too high, but not excessively so.
If we can create stronger, fitter, faster footballers with the benefit of technology and/or drugs who wouldn’t miss so many easy chances/fail to save soft shots surely we’d all support that?
Football is too important to be left to human beings
@DevC said: @EwanHoosaami , I apologise if I misunderstood your point. I genuinely now don't understand what you were trying to say. perhaps you could just clarify. If it were possible to correct most refereeing errors without significant delay, would you choose to? @EwanHoosaami , I don't buy your argument that things should be the same at all levels I am afraid. Simply not realistic. At my local club, the pitch is nowhere near as smooth as it would be at league standard and the floodlights nowhere near as strong. does that mean that premier league games should be played in poorly lit bumpy pitched stadiums with minimal facilities for fans - of course not. The best practically available facilities should be available for all games but of course they will vary by level.
Well, there are clearly significant delays, hence this debate has arisen.
You are correct in that it isn't possible for all matches to be played with the same facilities, (your analogy of pitches & floodlights is not applicable to this debate), but given the laws of the game are the same for all, then they should be applied by equal judgement. It is what keeps the game so fascinating. VAR for one and not the other is not applying the laws of the game equally. The referees & linos are just as likely to be right or wrong at all levels, bringing in VAR should be for all, (not possible), or nothing.
Again, attending just a few games without any particular bias of emotion, I wouldn't expect you to understand.
@DevC, except it's only that way (offside needing to be factual and evaluated down to the last mm by the VAR official) because the PL have chosen that particular "nuanced interpretation" of the VAR rules. Their words not mine.
The IFAB laws on VAR clearly state it should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
You're trying to tell me it was a clear and obvious error the assistant referee didn't raise his flag, when the VAR official with the aid of technology takes 2-3 minutes to make a determination.
I don't agree with you.
Well, there are clearly significant delays, hence this debate has arisen.
You are correct in that it isn't possible for all matches to be played with the same facilities, (your analogy of pitches & floodlights is not applicable to this debate), but given the laws of the game are the same for all, then they should be applied by equal judgement. It is what keeps the game so fascinating. VAR for one and not the other is not applying the laws of the game equally. The referees & linos are just as likely to be right or wrong at all levels, bringing in VAR should be for all, (not possible), or nothing.
Again, attending just a few games without any particular bias of emotion, I wouldn't expect you to understand.
I would agree with you that sometimes it takes too long. Experience from other countries suggests that that time reduces as referees get used to the technology. I hope so.
I dont agree with your central paragraph. If you don't like my examples of pitches and floodlights, try referees then. Lower league matches are refereed by relatively inexperienced referees. if I have understood your logic correctly, that means all games must be refereed by junior level referees. Linesmen for kids matches are often dads, does that mean we should expect dom gape senior to run the line on saturday. Sorry just dont buy that argument at all.
Its not immediately clear why watching 12 games so far in a season or six means you would have a different view on whether or not VAR may be used for premier league games and not isthmian league ones. I am missing your logic there
@Twizz said: @DevC, except it's only that way (offside needing to be factual and evaluated down to the last mm by the VAR official) because the PL have chosen that particular "nuanced interpretation" of the VAR rules. Their words not mine.
The IFAB laws on VAR clearly state it should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
You're trying to tell me it was a clear and obvious error the assistant referee didn't raise his flag, when the VAR official with the aid of technology takes 2-3 minutes to make a determination.
I don't agree with you.
the offside law is I believe the law at all levels in all countries. If any part of your body apart from arms is ahead of the second last defender you are offside. I don't really understand your point re clear and obvious error. If the pictures (taking account of Drcongo's fair point that nothing is totally infallible) show a player is offside and the referee has judged him onside, the clearly the referee was wrong and the decision should be corrected. Why would you not get it right if you can rather than go with the referees wrong decision (apart from the time delay argument)?
Well, there are clearly significant delays, hence this debate has arisen.
You are correct in that it isn't possible for all matches to be played with the same facilities, (your analogy of pitches & floodlights is not applicable to this debate), but given the laws of the game are the same for all, then they should be applied by equal judgement. It is what keeps the game so fascinating. VAR for one and not the other is not applying the laws of the game equally. The referees & linos are just as likely to be right or wrong at all levels, bringing in VAR should be for all, (not possible), or nothing.
Again, attending just a few games without any particular bias of emotion, I wouldn't expect you to understand.
I would agree with you that sometimes it takes too long. Experience from other countries suggests that that time reduces as referees get used to the technology. I hope so.
I dont agree with your central paragraph. If you don't like my examples of pitches and floodlights, try referees then. Lower league matches are refereed by relatively inexperienced referees. if I have understood your logic correctly, that means all games must be refereed by junior level referees. Linesmen for kids matches are often dads, does that mean we should expect dom gape senior to run the line on saturday. Sorry just dont buy that argument at all.
Its not immediately clear why watching 12 games so far in a season or six means you would have a different view on whether or not VAR may be used for premier league games and not isthmian league ones. I am missing your logic there
@Twizz said: @DevC, except it's only that way (offside needing to be factual and evaluated down to the last mm by the VAR official) because the PL have chosen that particular "nuanced interpretation" of the VAR rules. Their words not mine.
The IFAB laws on VAR clearly state it should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
You're trying to tell me it was a clear and obvious error the assistant referee didn't raise his flag, when the VAR official with the aid of technology takes 2-3 minutes to make a determination.
I don't agree with you.
the offside law is I believe the law at all levels in all countries. If any part of your body apart from arms is ahead of the second last defender you are offside. I don't really understand your point re clear and obvious error. If the pictures (taking account of Drcongo's fair point that nothing is totally infallible) show a player is offside and the referee has judged him onside, the clearly the referee was wrong and the decision should be corrected. Why would you not get it right if you can rather than go with the referees wrong decision (apart from the time delay argument)?
Because it's complete ridiculous. I want to watch football, not a trigonometry exercise.
@DevC, I am aware of the law as it relates to offside.
What you, like the PL, are choosing is how you interpret the VAR laws. I'll say it again; the IFAB laws state VAR should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
My arguement is that if it takes a VAR official with technology 2-3min to determine that a player was in an offside position it's far from clear and obvious it was an error.
it might be @Username . Maybe we should change the law if you want. the line has to be drawn somewhere though and there will always be close calls. Ignoring the time delay element for a moment, surely better to get those close calls right than to trust to an inevitably fairly random linesman's guess on such close matters.
29 match changing errors have so far been corrected apparently. Is that not a good thing?
@Twizz, simple question for you. ignore time delays for a moment. TV pictures show that a player was very marginally offside. The linesman made a (understandable) mistake and awarded the goal. Remember this is an objective not a subjective decision. Is it fairer that the goal should be given or disallowed?
do you not think it is worth an average of delaying 1 min 15 seconds to correct a match changing error one game in four? If so, surely it then becomes a question of how best to inform the fans what is happening during that 1 min 15.
@DevC said:
do you not think it is worth an average of delaying 1 min 15 seconds to correct a match changing error one game in four? If so, surely it then becomes a question of how best to inform the fans what is happening during that 1 min 15.
At the minute I'm 50% likely to be pissed off by the ref, he's equally likely to give a decision for or against me, but I understand he can make mistakes.
With VAR I'm still 50% likely to be pissed off by which way the decision goes, but add another 10% to every game when VAR is involved where I don't know what's going on and it slows the game down or steals a celebration for the sake of finding someone 1mm offside.
@DevC, why ignore the time delay? We might as well talk about how best to bake a cake if you're going to ignore the obvious problems with VAR for the sake of making your point and not addressing mine.
But just to humour you I will answer:-
If the error was clear and obvious and could be evaluated in real time yes I'd be in favour of VAR.
But when it takes the VAR official 2-3 minutes to make a decision it isn't a clear and obvious error and I'm not in favour.
A meaningless comment. There's a huge difference between a striker being 2 yards offside and 3 and a half minutes of replays showing that a player's s toenail might have been offside in the build up
It is so blindingly obvious to me that it would have been better for that goal to stand that it's pointless discussing it with someone who thins the opposite. I would never change my mind
It's also a bit of a red herring as for me it's never been about getting every decision right. It's been about preserving the experience of seeing a game and the emotions it provokes. For me, nothing is worth taking away the spontaneity of that, and the big moments in games where you genuinely lose yourself in a sudden rush of emotion. As I've said, if you don't go to games and treat them as an accountant would a balance sheet then that won't be as important to you
I was trying to understand your fundamental concern @Twizz . We agree that on a few occasions they have taken too long.
We disagree though on the other matter. On an objective decision I would prefer ideally the correct decision to be made but accept that sometimes the time to get there may be too long. You are happy that the wrong decision stands if it is close.
@DevC said:
I was trying to understand your fundamental concern @Twizz . We agree that on a few occasions they have taken too long.
We disagree though on the other matter. On an objective decision I would prefer ideally the correct decision to be made but accept that sometimes the time to get there may be too long. You are happy that the wrong decision stands if it is close.
We will have to disagree on the principle.
Before VAR, how many games were ruined by an offside decision like the one at Sheffield United the other day?
Surely the main problem with VAR is that decisions given by poor referees are reviewed by other poor referees who don't even sit in the ground.
Imagine making 'game changing' decisions having never been near a pitch.
At the cricket at the weekend they gave an LBW showing the wrong delivery. If fact one the same batsman had actually hit for six. Nothing will ever solve the errors.
@DevC said:
loads of games have been ruined by bad offside calls. sheff u goal was correctly disallowed as Sheff u manager agrees. Decision took too long though.
If that goal was given, noone would have complained, it wouldn't even have been noticed.
Actually, VAR is the equivalent of having speed cameras every 2 metres on every road and getting a ticket through the post for doing 30.001 mph past one and then having someone argue that's the same as doing 60mph past a school
You are spectacularly missing the point a lot of us are making @DevC.
A lot of us are perfectly happy to accept referee or linesman’s errors as part and parcel of being a football supporter.
I genuinely, honestly and with every fibre of my 50+ WWFC watching years being am fine and content with the 6363 wrong decisions against us and 84 wrong decisions for us that I have personally witnesses.
We are now in the ludicrous situation where the rules of the game are being changed or interpreted to the needs of VAR:
Handball. Used to be easy. If you deliberately handle the ball in the opinion of the referee it’s a penalty. That opinion is subjective but has to be. The whole point of the rule is to stop a player taken illegal advantage by using their hand of arm. The non-penalty In the Liverpool game on Sunday which everyone says should have been a penalty in accordance with the current interpretation would never have been a penalty a year or two ago. We’ve had to come up with a whole new language to make a technology system work and in the process lost all sense of e we’d hat the rule is trying to prevent.
It’s even worse in the case of offside. The rule exists to prevent an attacker gaining unfair advantage by standing/running/being ahead of a defender. The job of the referees assistant should be to make a decision as to whether an attacker is indeed trying to do so as well as if they actually are.
Being level with the last defender is a perfectly adequate way for someone running alongside (or several steps behind) to make a subjective decision. But no. We have to change/interpret the rules so that if an attackers toe is beyond a defenders nose (or whatever) if is technically offside.
Football is a universally popular spectator and participant sport largely because of its simplicity. As a player you always knew what you could or couldn’t do on the pitch. The more complicated we make the rules the more justification there is for VAR but the further away from the spirit of the laws and the harder it will become for kids in the park to understand.
Fine if that’s your future for the game but it’s certainly not mine.
You can disagree with my vision for the simple, beautiful game and laugh at my naivety and Luddite tendency but I’m sorry. I don’t really care how much they bugger up the Premier league but if it seeps down to our level I’m getting my pitchfork out.
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POTD!
I'd personally much prefer the occasional seething over some appalling decision, as you get a few calls your way from time to time too. That's half the beauty, the outrage, the conversations and debate about it.
Luckily, it won't affect us, unless we play a Premier league team away in the cup? I think that's right?
But it's certain they won't just bin it. We're already behind the times with other sports and leagues, we're not now going to go backwards ( as they see it). They'll just have to improve the use. Getting the ref to view a monitor seems a much better way than some phantom random of miscellaneous allegiance sitting in a bunker somewhere.
Just to answer a couple of these points and then perhaps best to let this lie.
@EwanHoosaami , I apologise if I misunderstood your point. I genuinely now don't understand what you were trying to say. perhaps you could just clarify. If it were possible to correct most refereeing errors without significant delay, would you choose to?
@eric_plant , the answer to your question, were there key refereeing decisions in the live matches i have seen that I think were wrong and that I would like to have seen corrected
@drcongo , I agree that nothing mankind has designed is ever completely infallible. Do you agree with me though that technology is far more likely to get a marginal offside decision right than the human eye in live time?
@EwanHoosaami , I don't buy your argument that things should be the same at all levels I am afraid. Simply not realistic. At my local club, the pitch is nowhere near as smooth as it would be at league standard and the floodlights nowhere near as strong. does that mean that premier league games should be played in poorly lit bumpy pitched stadiums with minimal facilities for fans - of course not. The best practically available facilities should be available for all games but of course they will vary by level.
No idea whether these statistics are right but apparently the best view we have is that in 120 matches, 29 critical match changing wrong decisions have been corrected, so roughly 1 in 4 matches has not been spoiled by a referee getting a key decision wrong.
The average delay for those 29 decisions is apparently 1 minute 15 secs. That feels like worth waiting.
the total time spent reviewing decisions has apparently been 400 minutes, an average of 3.5 minutes per match although some of that time has been while the game has been in progress and hence not visible. I think that is a little too high, but not excessively so.
If we can create stronger, fitter, faster footballers with the benefit of technology and/or drugs who wouldn’t miss so many easy chances/fail to save soft shots surely we’d all support that?
Football is too important to be left to human beings
Oh and apparently it’s working fine as it is:
"I'm really pleased, honestly, with how we have started out," said Swarbrick.
That’s alright then.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50380641
Well, there are clearly significant delays, hence this debate has arisen.
You are correct in that it isn't possible for all matches to be played with the same facilities, (your analogy of pitches & floodlights is not applicable to this debate), but given the laws of the game are the same for all, then they should be applied by equal judgement. It is what keeps the game so fascinating. VAR for one and not the other is not applying the laws of the game equally. The referees & linos are just as likely to be right or wrong at all levels, bringing in VAR should be for all, (not possible), or nothing.
Again, attending just a few games without any particular bias of emotion, I wouldn't expect you to understand.
@DevC, except it's only that way (offside needing to be factual and evaluated down to the last mm by the VAR official) because the PL have chosen that particular "nuanced interpretation" of the VAR rules. Their words not mine.
The IFAB laws on VAR clearly state it should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
You're trying to tell me it was a clear and obvious error the assistant referee didn't raise his flag, when the VAR official with the aid of technology takes 2-3 minutes to make a determination.
I don't agree with you.
I would agree with you that sometimes it takes too long. Experience from other countries suggests that that time reduces as referees get used to the technology. I hope so.
I dont agree with your central paragraph. If you don't like my examples of pitches and floodlights, try referees then. Lower league matches are refereed by relatively inexperienced referees. if I have understood your logic correctly, that means all games must be refereed by junior level referees. Linesmen for kids matches are often dads, does that mean we should expect dom gape senior to run the line on saturday. Sorry just dont buy that argument at all.
Its not immediately clear why watching 12 games so far in a season or six means you would have a different view on whether or not VAR may be used for premier league games and not isthmian league ones. I am missing your logic there
the offside law is I believe the law at all levels in all countries. If any part of your body apart from arms is ahead of the second last defender you are offside. I don't really understand your point re clear and obvious error. If the pictures (taking account of Drcongo's fair point that nothing is totally infallible) show a player is offside and the referee has judged him onside, the clearly the referee was wrong and the decision should be corrected. Why would you not get it right if you can rather than go with the referees wrong decision (apart from the time delay argument)?
Because it's complete ridiculous. I want to watch football, not a trigonometry exercise.
@DevC, I am aware of the law as it relates to offside.
What you, like the PL, are choosing is how you interpret the VAR laws. I'll say it again; the IFAB laws state VAR should be used to assist the referee in the event of a clear and obvious error.
My arguement is that if it takes a VAR official with technology 2-3min to determine that a player was in an offside position it's far from clear and obvious it was an error.
it might be @Username . Maybe we should change the law if you want. the line has to be drawn somewhere though and there will always be close calls. Ignoring the time delay element for a moment, surely better to get those close calls right than to trust to an inevitably fairly random linesman's guess on such close matters.
29 match changing errors have so far been corrected apparently. Is that not a good thing?
@Twizz, simple question for you. ignore time delays for a moment. TV pictures show that a player was very marginally offside. The linesman made a (understandable) mistake and awarded the goal. Remember this is an objective not a subjective decision. Is it fairer that the goal should be given or disallowed?
Might as well ignore there's even a game of football to be played with paying fans in the stadium watching
do you not think it is worth an average of delaying 1 min 15 seconds to correct a match changing error one game in four? If so, surely it then becomes a question of how best to inform the fans what is happening during that 1 min 15.
That sheff utd disallowed goal counts as one of your "match changing errors"
At the minute I'm 50% likely to be pissed off by the ref, he's equally likely to give a decision for or against me, but I understand he can make mistakes.
With VAR I'm still 50% likely to be pissed off by which way the decision goes, but add another 10% to every game when VAR is involved where I don't know what's going on and it slows the game down or steals a celebration for the sake of finding someone 1mm offside.
as Chris wilder says, if it’s offside it’s offside.
They do need to speed it up though.
@DevC, why ignore the time delay? We might as well talk about how best to bake a cake if you're going to ignore the obvious problems with VAR for the sake of making your point and not addressing mine.
But just to humour you I will answer:-
If the error was clear and obvious and could be evaluated in real time yes I'd be in favour of VAR.
But when it takes the VAR official 2-3 minutes to make a decision it isn't a clear and obvious error and I'm not in favour.
A meaningless comment. There's a huge difference between a striker being 2 yards offside and 3 and a half minutes of replays showing that a player's s toenail might have been offside in the build up
It is so blindingly obvious to me that it would have been better for that goal to stand that it's pointless discussing it with someone who thins the opposite. I would never change my mind
It's also a bit of a red herring as for me it's never been about getting every decision right. It's been about preserving the experience of seeing a game and the emotions it provokes. For me, nothing is worth taking away the spontaneity of that, and the big moments in games where you genuinely lose yourself in a sudden rush of emotion. As I've said, if you don't go to games and treat them as an accountant would a balance sheet then that won't be as important to you
I was trying to understand your fundamental concern @Twizz . We agree that on a few occasions they have taken too long.
We disagree though on the other matter. On an objective decision I would prefer ideally the correct decision to be made but accept that sometimes the time to get there may be too long. You are happy that the wrong decision stands if it is close.
We will have to disagree on the principle.
Before VAR, how many games were ruined by an offside decision like the one at Sheffield United the other day?
None
Not only that, but you'd never have even known there was even a possibility of an offside
It's football taken over by pen pushers
loads of games have been ruined by bad offside calls. sheff u goal was correctly disallowed as Sheff u manager agrees. Decision took too long though.
Surely the main problem with VAR is that decisions given by poor referees are reviewed by other poor referees who don't even sit in the ground.
Imagine making 'game changing' decisions having never been near a pitch.
At the cricket at the weekend they gave an LBW showing the wrong delivery. If fact one the same batsman had actually hit for six. Nothing will ever solve the errors.
Does give betting syndicates new chances though.
If that goal was given, noone would have complained, it wouldn't even have been noticed.
Actually, VAR is the equivalent of having speed cameras every 2 metres on every road and getting a ticket through the post for doing 30.001 mph past one and then having someone argue that's the same as doing 60mph past a school
But it surely would have been unfair, as the video shows. Is that not important to you?
What would have been unfair?
Surely no one is actually that anally retentive?
You are spectacularly missing the point a lot of us are making @DevC.
A lot of us are perfectly happy to accept referee or linesman’s errors as part and parcel of being a football supporter.
I genuinely, honestly and with every fibre of my 50+ WWFC watching years being am fine and content with the 6363 wrong decisions against us and 84 wrong decisions for us that I have personally witnesses.
We are now in the ludicrous situation where the rules of the game are being changed or interpreted to the needs of VAR:
Handball. Used to be easy. If you deliberately handle the ball in the opinion of the referee it’s a penalty. That opinion is subjective but has to be. The whole point of the rule is to stop a player taken illegal advantage by using their hand of arm. The non-penalty In the Liverpool game on Sunday which everyone says should have been a penalty in accordance with the current interpretation would never have been a penalty a year or two ago. We’ve had to come up with a whole new language to make a technology system work and in the process lost all sense of e we’d hat the rule is trying to prevent.
It’s even worse in the case of offside. The rule exists to prevent an attacker gaining unfair advantage by standing/running/being ahead of a defender. The job of the referees assistant should be to make a decision as to whether an attacker is indeed trying to do so as well as if they actually are.
Being level with the last defender is a perfectly adequate way for someone running alongside (or several steps behind) to make a subjective decision. But no. We have to change/interpret the rules so that if an attackers toe is beyond a defenders nose (or whatever) if is technically offside.
Football is a universally popular spectator and participant sport largely because of its simplicity. As a player you always knew what you could or couldn’t do on the pitch. The more complicated we make the rules the more justification there is for VAR but the further away from the spirit of the laws and the harder it will become for kids in the park to understand.
Fine if that’s your future for the game but it’s certainly not mine.
You can disagree with my vision for the simple, beautiful game and laugh at my naivety and Luddite tendency but I’m sorry. I don’t really care how much they bugger up the Premier league but if it seeps down to our level I’m getting my pitchfork out.