Topic: VAR! Video Assistant Referee & Shite Referees in General

[Romford_Red]

The adjustment to the rule is stupid and still leaves it open interpretation.

It should simply be that if you were offside, you can't even make a move toward the ball, or the player now in possession until the ball has moved on to the NEXT player.

Simple and easy.

[Mr Benn please?]

"Out in the stands, an overcoated City fan hurried for the exits, delighted with his last-gasp win and keen to beat the rush home."

Meanwhile, that overcoated City fan had found his way to the car park. Poor guy. When a TV reporter pushed a microphone in his face and asked for a reaction to the disappointing news, he said: “Why would I be disappointed? We won!”

Yeah, when that happened I liked VAR. Not so much now!

[red_Mark1980]

That way of interpreting the rule is seldom seen. How many seasons is it since the Lovren incident? There haven't been too many that I can recall since then. Even the Silva goal isn't comparable to the video above and the Lovren one, where they are clearly trying to intercept a pass.

Because it's clearly bananas. If the defender boots the ball the width of the pitch and the fella is on the other side I'd say it should stand.

Are we really at the point where goals like that are allowed to stand (especially given how late flags go up now).

[rob1966]

Didn't do the same when we were moaning about the Lovren decision based on the same rule.

So now Rashford could have been given offside on Sunday even after Rhys tried to clear it.

[thejbs]

So now Rashford could have been given offside on Sunday even after Rhys tried to clear it.

No. That hasn't changed, per the sky sports piece posted above.

"Accordingly, Aston Villa's first goal against Newcastle United on Saturday 23 January 2021 was correctly not penalised for offside as Ollie Watkins received the ball following a deliberate play by Fabian Schar and did not impact Schar's ability to play the ball."

[KissThisGuy]

So now Rashford could have been given offside on Sunday even after Rhys tried to clear it.

Was that ever given as the reason Rashford wasn't given offside? I severely doubt it. The rule had been in place for a while and doesn't generally be applied as it was in the Lovren case. I think people are just making assumptions because the City incident was so close to the United game. I don't know if Rashford was on or off, I was surprised VAR didnt take 5 minutes to review it, though. Just to be clear, I would be a lot happier if all these incidents were given as goals, the faux scientific drawing of lines really pisses me off. The Bamford one earlier in the season was especially egregious, I'm near 100% sure there was a defender closer to the goal than the defender they chose, but he was obscured from the camera on the angle the used to draw the lines. I had a discussion with that Dale bloke from ESPN on Twitter about it . I asked him how can they decide which defender is closest to the goal in a matter of seconds, but it takes them 5 minutes to determine if the forward is ahead of him?

[Mr Benn please?]

No. That hasn't changed, per the sky sports piece posted above.

"Accordingly, Aston Villa's first goal against Newcastle United on Saturday 23 January 2021 was correctly not penalised for offside as Ollie Watkins received the ball following a deliberate play by Fabian Schar and did not impact Schar's ability to play the ball."

Well you could argue that Williams was off balance while trying to clear the ball and this led to him miscontrolling it; and that he was off balance  because he was  attempting to prevent Rashford from having a clear run on goal. So Rashford being where he was clearly impacted Williams"s ability to play the ball. If Rashford hadn't been there he would have surely left the pass for Becker to collect. 

[4pool]

VAR find City a goal..when offside was flagged.

[Macphisto80]

VAR find City a goal..when offside was flagged.

Setting a new standard and that's saying something.

[Macphisto80]

It's also amazing how these c*nts have gotten two of the most bizarre and mental offside decisions in the history of the game in the past two or three games, whereas we haven't been given a break all season. The opposite, actually.

[fowlermagic]

Crazy as I presume once she flagged the ref would have got a notification via her that it was offside so he should have blown the whistle. Instead he left play go on for a few more seconds where they scored but surely everyone was expecting the whistle. Does not matter as City are flying again.

[goliath377]

What I find funny in the whole "he is not offside as long as defender deliberately played the ball" is that if defender does the same movement but misses the ball then it is offside. So the more you fuck up the less is the punishment which is ridiculous.

[markthescouser]

It’s mad, their guidence now offers 2 different ways to interpret 2 rules that sit next to each other and are worded very similarly.

Why would you want to stop one of these scenarios, but not the other?!

If Watkins is in an offside position (looked tight, but I’ve only seen it once), then surely everyone involved in the game wants that to be given offside?

With this new guidence, if I was big sam or Sean dyche, I’d have my cf permanently stood 5yards offside knowing that every big punt out of my defence now has to be cleared back into midfield by the opposition defenders rather than left to run through to the keeper

[Kekule]

It’s mad, their guidence now offers 2 different ways to interpret 2 rules that sit next to each other and are worded very similarly.

Why would you want to stop one of these scenarios, but not the other?!

If Watkins is in an offside position (looked tight, but I’ve only seen it once), then surely everyone involved in the game wants that to be given offside?

With this new guidence, if I was big sam or Sean dyche, I’d have my cf permanently stood 5yards offside knowing that every big punt out of my defence now has to be cleared back into midfield by the opposition defenders rather than left to run through to the keeper

Which is exactly what they want.  It means they can justify any decision that has been made and none of them ever have to admit to any errors.  They get to keep deluding themselves that they get 95%+ of all decisions correct (or whatever ridiculous stat they pumped out last time).

[thejbs]

Well you could argue that Williams was off balance while trying to clear the ball and this led to him miscontrolling it; and that he was off balance  because he was  attempting to prevent Rashford from having a clear run on goal. So Rashford being where he was clearly impacted Williams"s ability to play the ball. If Rashford hadn't been there he would have surely left the pass for Becker to collect.

I think we're getting into mental gymnastics territory. If we had scored it against them, there wouldn't be any cry of foul play by our fans. In fact, I'd be furious if we'd scored that goal and it was chalked off as offside. And if it was given as a goal for us, I'd be ridiculing Utd fans for trying to claim it was offside.

[LovelyCushionedHeader]

They get to keep deluding themselves that they get 95%+ of all decisions correct (or whatever ridiculous stat they pumped out last time).

The thing is, this is actually accurate. Because it literally includes ALL decisions. A striker blazes the ball over the bar with no one around him and the referee awards a goal kick? Add it to the correct pile. Then when you add in the ones that they can bend the laws to make it seem like a correct decision, 95% doesn't sound too great.

If they looked just at disputable decisions, which they won't because it'll show them up, the percentage will be a hell of a lot lower. Probably below 50% which would be impressive considering they could guess their way to that marker. But when the PGMOL literally governs itself, what's the point?

[Dr Stu-Pid]

Although it is ambiguous, IFAB/ FIFA need to go back to the offside wording to use some kind of 'interfering with play' type phrase.  Anyone who has ever played the game knows that the Hamilton goal in the video above should be disallowed because the defender was trying to intercept a pass played to a player in an offside position.  The second a defender takes an action due to someone standing offside then they should be deemed to be 'interfering with play' and given offside.  The same applies for the Watkins goal and the Rashford goal (although I don't think Rashford was actually offside when the ball was played).  It would also apply to the Kane penalty in the Lovren incident a couple of years ago.

I'd also go further and disallow any goal scored by a player from an offside position who had never got themselves back onside at any point.  So for example, in the Burnley game their tactics where to hit the ball long for Wood and Barnes to chase knowing that they would be one on one with our covering CBs.  There would have been nothing in the current rules to stop Barnes standing 20 yards offside between Fabinho and Alisson and then a defender punting the ball behind Fabinho for Wood to chase.  Barnes then stands between Fabinho and Alisson to stop the back pass and cause Fabinho to rush his clearance or give away a throw in in a dangerous position.  Barnes is clearly interfering with play in this scenario, yet if Fabinho does play the back pass then he is deemed to be onside and can score.  I'm actually surprised that no team has actively used this tactic yet.

But what is clearly ridiculous is that we live in a world where they'll draw lines to determine that someone's upper arm was 1cm offside which gave them no advantage and yet disallow the goal, but then use the same offside rule to allow a goal in which a defender tries to intercept a pass to someone who is 5 yards offside and so is deemed to have played them onside.

[Charlie Adams fried egg]

Although it is ambiguous, IFAB/ FIFA need to go back to the offside wording to use some kind of 'interfering with play' type phrase.  Anyone who has ever played the game knows that the Hamilton goal in the video above should be disallowed because the defender was trying to intercept a pass played to a player in an offside position.  The second a defender takes an action due to someone standing offside then they should be deemed to be 'interfering with play' and given offside.  The same applies for the Watkins goal and the Rashford goal (although I don't think Rashford was actually offside when the ball was played).  It would also apply to the Kane penalty in the Lovren incident a couple of years ago.

I'd also go further and disallow any goal scored by a player from an offside position who had never got themselves back onside at any point.  So for example, in the Burnley game their tactics where to hit the ball long for Wood and Barnes to chase knowing that they would be one on one with our covering CBs.  There would have been nothing in the current rules to stop Barnes standing 20 yards offside between Fabinho and Alisson and then a defender punting the ball behind Fabinho for Wood to chase.  Barnes then stands between Fabinho and Alisson to stop the back pass and cause Fabinho to rush his clearance or give away a throw in in a dangerous position.  Barnes is clearly interfering with play in this scenario, yet if Fabinho does play the back pass then he is deemed to be onside and can score.  I'm actually surprised that no team has actively used this tactic yet.

But what is clearly ridiculous is that we live in a world where they'll draw lines to determine that someone's upper arm was 1cm offside which gave them no advantage and yet disallow the goal, but then use the same offside rule to allow a goal in which a defender tries to intercept a pass to someone who is 5 yards offside and so is deemed to have played them onside.

Another good post mate.
Football in general is pretty poor at introspection, but PGMOL take it to a whole new level.
An organisation committed to improving the game simply does not put themselves in a position where such contradictions are commonplace, but improving the game seems to be the last thing that matters to PGMOL.

[Dr Stu-Pid]

Oh, and as this has turned into a general referee complaint thread...

One aspect that annoys the hell out of me is when referees clearly don't understand how to use the advantage rule.  To give a couple of examples:

1.  In the Burnley game there was a moment where Robertson was fouled probably 10 yards from the corner flag after he had played the ball back to Gini.  The referee waved play on because we still had the ball, but Gini was immediately closed down by a Burnley player and so just had to play the ball backwards to one of the CBs or Thiago.  So now instead of having a free kick in a dangerous area that is equivalent to a corner, we instead have harmless possession and Burnley can reset their shape.

2.  In the Utd game Gini received the ball under pressure midway in his own half and shielded it really well, which caused the Utd player (Pogba?) to drag him backwards and obviously foul him.  Again the referee sees the foul and allows play to go on because Gini still has the ball.  But now he is being closed down by two players and so has to play the ball back to one of the CBs who is immediately closed down and has to knock it long and give away possession.  So instead of having a free kick that allows us to reset and move up the pitch and have some controlled possession, Utd have the ball back.

These happen all of the time and yet would never be counted as mistakes in any metrics.  There are lots of other issues like that which won't show up in any metrics, such as:

 - not booking a player for a foul and then booking someone 5 minutes later for an almost identical offence
 - booking someone based on the mythical 'totting up' process but not booking someone who has actually committed more fouls in the same game
 - not giving someone a second yellow card despite it being a clear booking if he hadn't already been booked
 - not booking a goalkeeper until the 85th minute for time wasting despite them taking 30 seconds over every goal kick from minute one of the game (hello Nick Pope)
 - (my personal favourite) giving a free-kick the second that a defender gets touched and goes to ground, but never giving a free kick to an attacker in the same situation

None of these are 'mistakes', but all of them impact the game massively.

[Charlie Adams fried egg]

All that ^ plus the farce that is VAR, plus the inept twats at PGMOL have made the game pretty much unwatchable.

It's compounded when you see rugby refs calmly asking the team on the video exactly what they want a second look at.

The fact that part of PGMOLS defence is often that they weren't looking at a particular aspect of the incident for whatever reason is farcica. Surely the aim should be to ensure the correct overall outcome. ie was it a goal, was it a pen, was it offside. Not split the incident into micro incidents then choose which one to focus on.

[rob1966]

I think we're getting into mental gymnastics territory. If we had scored it against them, there wouldn't be any cry of foul play by our fans. In fact, I'd be furious if we'd scored that goal and it was chalked off as offside. And if it was given as a goal for us, I'd be ridiculing Utd fans for trying to claim it was offside.

But you just know if we had scored that goal, it would 100% have been given offside. They'd have just denied there was any touch on the ball, or claimed Mo gained an advantage.

We know they've twisted things to fuck us over, look at Mo v Brighton, the took it from the players right foot, when it is physically impossible for that to have been nearer to the goal than his left hip and shoulder



Or Bobby v Villa, that is just blatant cheating this one

[red_Mark1980]

I know you can get into a bit of confirmation bias. But the advantage rule seems to be applied as and when at the refs whim.

We had one in the second half I'm sure against United where Pawson brings it back when the ball went to Mane. I'm not sure whether this is just myself watching through red tinted glasses or just because refs don't really understand football matches.

[Mr Benn please?]

I think we're getting into mental gymnastics territory. If we had scored it against them, there wouldn't be any cry of foul play by our fans. In fact, I'd be furious if we'd scored that goal and it was chalked off as offside. And if it was given as a goal for us, I'd be ridiculing Utd fans for trying to claim it was offside.

Not really. Look at the stills above in earlier posts. It's impossible to say from those whether Rashford was offside or not and as far as I know it wasn't checked in the same forensic way as some of the decisions given against us earlier in the season. E.g. Mo against Brighton.

So, either the VAR team did a quick check and decided he was onside, in which case I'd expect to see a picture of the incident with some lines on it to show how they came to the decision; or they decided not to review it because Williams touched the ball before Rashford. If the latter, then that is very similar to the instances discussed earlier involving Mings and Schaar which led to the rules being changed mid season.

If the same incident happened with us, to be honest I would expect VAR to review it and over rule it because that is what has already happened several times over the last couple of seasons. I might be wrong but I can't remember any occasions where a tight offside VAR review has gone in our favour.

[El Lobo]

Not really. Look at the stills above in earlier posts. It's impossible to say from those whether Rashford was offside or not and as far as I know it wasn't checked in the same forensic way as some of the decisions given against us earlier in the season. E.g. Mo against Brighton.

So, either the VAR team did a quick check and decided he was onside, in which case I'd expect to see a picture of the incident with some lines on it to show how they came to the decision; or they decided not to review it because Williams touched the ball before Rashford. If the latter, then that is very similar to the instances discussed earlier involving Mings and Schaar which led to the rules being changed mid season.

If the same incident happened with us, to be honest I would expect VAR to review it and over rule it because that is what has already happened several times over the last couple of seasons. I might be wrong but I can't remember any occasions where a tight offside VAR review has gone in our favour.

We had one against Wolves last season, I think at home, right before HT where they scored and it got ruled out for a very tight offside.

But that, and the penalty against Leicester at home which was a stonewaller, seem to be the two people use to prove 'how lucky we were with refs last season'.

[Dr. Beaker]

I'm surprised that the club (or FSG) haven't got their lawyers pressuring for the VAR conversation to be broadcast. That should be the very minimum first step to improvement.

[Chakan]

I'm surprised that the club (or FSG) haven't got their lawyers pressuring for the VAR conversation to be broadcast. That should be the very minimum first step to improvement.

Approached who? With what kinda lawsuit?

[Dr. Beaker]

Approached who? With what kinda lawsuit?

There has to be somewhere a business can seek redress when such massive amounts of money are at stake.

[swoopy]

Or Bobby v Villa, that is just blatant cheating this one

Just re-watched that again to try to get my head around it. You can see the first time they drew the lines the black line was clearly infront of the yellow line and it was instantly removed from the screen and re-drawn to make it offside. Dreadful! Andy Gray on BeIn said very similar and said it should've been a goal.

I don't think there is a conspiracy with VAR / Referees vs Liverpool but I cannot explain why Atkinson did that. That decision is just wrong.

Salah's vs Brighton the line is clearly drawn from the wrong place too.

[Chakan]

There has to be somewhere a business can seek redress when such massive amounts of money are at stake.

Well since VAR is controlled by the PGMOL we could go to them

I'm sure we'd get a more than positive response from them.

[Dr. Beaker]

Well since VAR is controlled by the PGMOL we could go to them

I'm sure we'd get a more than positive response from them.

Or their employers.

[Chakan]

Or their employers.

Do they have anyone above them? I think that's the problem, they don't answer to anyone.

[Dr. Beaker]

Do they have anyone above them? I think that's the problem, they don't answer to anyone.

Well they are employed by the Premier League, the FA, UEFA and FIFA I presume.

[Chakan]

Well they are employed by the Premier League, the FA, UEFA and FIFA I presume.

No they are funded by them.

[Dr. Beaker]

No they are funded by them.

He who pays the piper, has some clout, as the saying goes. So it's a bit like employing isn't it?

I suppose us lot turning the telly off is another option, which seems to be creeping in if what people are saying is to be trusted.

[Andy82lfc]

Or Bobby v Villa, that is just blatant cheating this one

This video underneath is mental, actually shows it even more obviously. Absolutely incredible. I mean as the video shows they drew two different lines. They literally chose to make him offside as we have no idea where the 'floor' is.

If I am trying to be nice and assuming instead of being bias they are just clueless idiots, I would say they are trying to make the 'floor' at the position of the foot, but as his body is twisted so obviously his armpit is nowhere near in line with his left foot anyway!

Said it all season but logically it is surely more clear that sometimes they have used bias against us rather than being repeatedly so incompetent and also coincidentally against us almost 100% of the time. It just doesn't make sense otherwise.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/FB7zZLRBRsw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/FB7zZLRBRsw</a>

[El Lobo]

Well fuck me sideways

[oxenstierna]

Always been a fan

[princeoftherocks]

That was fucking well harsh on spurs....  Ha!

[Rush 82]

They brought out the lines again - looking for shirt sleeves since it's LFC playing.

[Fromola]

Thankfully Atkinson not on VAR.

Feels good to finally get a decision