Yeah, but if he throws himself down, there's not enough contact there to send him down and he won't get his shot away. I don't think he'll give it. I would actually say that's a good call from Taylor, rewarded the players honesty and knew the attempted push affected his shot.
VAR and Refs | General Discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Considering Romero got away with a kick out a few minutes before, and then planted one on a guys shin, then no I don't really think he has a case that wouldn't make him sound ridiculous.
The thing with the Casemiro one was his foot bounced off the ball which made the contact high.
Not saying it's not good that he's come out saying that - but it's easier to do when you haven't been royally screwed over by a decision - which will happen at some point so I guess we'll see then! My theory is that eventually ever manager loses it with Refs (and understandbly so to a point)
Again, this is what should happen. Any contentious decision, ref immediately goes to the screen and converses on what the speculative point is and make a decision. Obviously not for offsides or so on, but red cards, speculative decisions, yeah do that instead.
I'm not even going into the differences in the tackles, but even assuming the tackles are equal surely you can admit that last night's decision (no foul, no card) is more wrong than a foul and a yellow card, which Casemiro received for his tackle.
Interesting segment here, they (on purpose or not) have the ball exactly where it was when VAR interfered b Brighton
People may think it’s out but for it to be so stupidly close and given is outrageous
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People may think it’s out but for it to be so stupidly close and given is outrageous
You'd have to wonder why Taylor felt it was a yellow card once he'd given a penalty for that. Did he feel that the defender's action was a "genuine attempt to play the ball", which is the prerequisite for not doing the double jeopardy thing (pen + red for denial of goalscoring opportunity)? If so he's even more dumb than I previously thought.
Well yeah, one was seen by the ref on the pitch, one was missed. I real time I can understand the ref not noticing Romero's foul, as he got so much of the ball, whereas Casemiro only just clipped it. Both were red card tackles (in my opinion) but both red cards could have been the basis for moaning by the manager. Which was the point I was making.
And as such, assuming both tackles were equal (which they weren't), then surely it should be easier for the VAR to intervene on Romero than Casemiro. Yes, both could be red cards, but it's a false equivalence between the two incidents (and the reasons for the complaints) because the Romero tackle had a much more clearly and obviously wrong on-field decision.
The moaning about the Casemiro incident is because the VAR jumped in and recommended overturning what was an acceptable decision (yellow card) by law, just like Michael Oliver jumped in and decided the derby by overturning a decision that was called on the pitch like it is 99% of the time things like that happen. The Romero decision (no foul) cannot be defended by the laws of the game, which is exactly where the VAR is supposed to step in.
Dude, I've no interest in arguing the toss about these two decisions. I think they were both red cards. VAR is a pox on the game but helped achieve the correct outcome in both scenarios. I was responding to someone who said Ange had nothing to complain about. I disagree, as I think many managers (and fans) would complain about the Romero red if it happened to their player, on the basis that he got so much of the ball. They'd be wrong but they would complain.
It needs to be revamped.
Either go to the cricket system with one or two challenges to the refs decision allowed
Or
Have VAR only overturn the decision when it's clear and obvious, use a semi-automated system for offsides.
The point about the ref not watching the same thing as the VAR is such an obvious one. Oliver was just standing around last night until told to go to the screen. Just have them both discussing it whilst watching at the same time, if it’s not straightforward.
Comments from Dermot Gallagher in today's Sky piece about the game last night really hammer home the issues for me, his focus is on bigging up his colleagues - there's no common sense applied to some of the decisions, no accountability or even suggestion that things could have been done better.
On the Udogie two footer:
On Romero kick:
This quote about how great VAR were for spotting the Romero challenge, which is surely their bread and butter, even got a comical footnote from Sky because it is so ludicrous.
On the Udogie two footer:
So basically, Sterling has to take the hit for them to properly punish a crazy challenge. Bolded bit is so off, it's almost like he's not even watched it.
On Romero kick:
So a kick off the ball is fine when petulant, if you properly leather someone though, that's not ok.
This quote about how great VAR were for spotting the Romero challenge, which is surely their bread and butter, even got a comical footnote from Sky because it is so ludicrous.
Not sure i get his point either way, but in the larger scheme of things:
The lack of respect / loss of authority is a result of years of underperforming referees in combination with a complete lack of transparacy. Referee underperforms and fecks up decisions, shouldn’t be talked about in public and suddenly they get to referee in a lower division for a weekend or two until they’re back in the PL, but obviously it’s not a punishment for fecking up because that never happened and here’s a fine for talking negatively about the refs performance.
Then, in relation to VAR, they’ve introduced a system that, by focusing on clear and obvious, has made things even worse. Identical situations have had completely different outcomes depending on referees and the VAR has even managed to completely feck up the most obvious situations because they aren’t very clever, like drawing incorrect lines or not being able to identify clear fouls that should be red cards (Pickford on VVD) because they are checking something else.
The solution isn’t demanding more respect, the solution is earning respect.
Football is played at a high pace, unless we’re playing, and things happen fast. The only way to implement a system like VAR properly is to completely open up the tolerance levels, ignore clear and obvious, and have more of an open discussion about what the referee on the pitch saw and what VAR is seeing on the replay, then if needed watch the entire clip instead of the segments that VAR carefully picks up to highlight their point. They’ve introduced a system where half the discussion isn’t about getting the correct decisions, but if the thresholds have been met in order for VAR to get involved. How on earth is it more important if it was correct for VAR to get involved rather than reaching the correct decision? It’s a bit like the golden days where they’d issue retrospective red cards if the ref didn’t see a specific situation during the match, but an identical situation where the ref issued a yellow card wasn’t to be touched because it had been dealt with, just not correctly, only now we have the tools to actually sort it out properly and it isn’t being used correctly.
Completely ignore Webb’s insane focus on the referee on the pitch and not re-refereeing matches, focus on consistently reaching the same conclusions so that teams won’t find themselves on the extreme end of the scale where one minute a goal is given against you that should be disallowed, and later in the match you score a goal that is less of a foul but gets disallowed and VAR won’t intervene because the thresholds for clear and obvious hasn’t been met.
Dermot is useless and half the time he ignores the actual rules. His take on the Udogie two foot lunge at Sterling is absolutely mental from every perspective there is.
You can absolutely guarantee that if Udogie had been sent off for that challenge, Dermot would have explained it was a clear red, dangerous/reckless two footed challenge, and that it was lucky that Sterling had managed to avoid it.
Yeah, he always chooses the version of events which defends the decision that's been made. But that's the whole Catch 22 with VAR. Football fans cling to this misguided notion that incidents like these can somehow be interpreted on a factual basis, without any need for interpretation or subjectivity. Which is a nonsense Almost every call is subjective and will be interpreted differently by different people. Especially people with skin in the game, such as fans and managers. Which is why the whole thing has got so incredibly toxic now we've been mis-sold VAR as a tool to remove subjectivity.
Exactly this. First priority is how great refs are, second is the actual laws of the game.
Stepping in when the on field ref who saw the incident in real time and showing him a slow mo is unusual at best. Far worse have been ignored by VAR and continue to be because either way the ref decides is not a clear and obvious error. That being said it’s Casemiro so it fits your agenda to want to perpetuate the red card argument.
That wording is the biggest problem with it, it's too subjective. What's clear and obvious today for one ref isn't clear and obvious tomorrow or next week for another.
Think the issue with the semi automated offside is the nike ball and the use of the technology.
There's some truth to this but then you can look at the big calls from last night and I don't think there's that much that up for genuine debate? Without the emotion of the game I'd say the outcomes to all the big calls are quite clear cut.
var is working exactly as is intended. post game fan engagement has never been higher. pages and pages, days and days after games are filled with controversy and articles about games. beforehand you’d just tell your mate the ref was bent and then we’d move on to other things before the next game. nowadays by the time the dust has settled, it’s time to do it all over again.
don’t for one minute think that the people at the premier league aren’t sitting around a table, talking about “the product” and how they can increase fan engagement or widen interest. they’re the same types of wankers that can be found at facebook or twitter. it’s a business that’s only goal is to increase revenue and market share, at all costs.
the walk across to the tv screen from the ref is so hollywood that it makes you sick, it’s done for twitter engagement, reaction videos, highlight reels. every other sport has managed to adopt it to improve the spectacle or the number of “right” calls. premier league football is one of the last sports to adopt any kind of video refereeing and it’s done its level best to ignore any of the ideas and improvements that it brought about in any of those sports. var, in this incarnation, has been implemented as a marketing tool, not a tool to improve referee’s lives or performances.
don’t for one minute think that the people at the premier league aren’t sitting around a table, talking about “the product” and how they can increase fan engagement or widen interest. they’re the same types of wankers that can be found at facebook or twitter. it’s a business that’s only goal is to increase revenue and market share, at all costs.
the walk across to the tv screen from the ref is so hollywood that it makes you sick, it’s done for twitter engagement, reaction videos, highlight reels. every other sport has managed to adopt it to improve the spectacle or the number of “right” calls. premier league football is one of the last sports to adopt any kind of video refereeing and it’s done its level best to ignore any of the ideas and improvements that it brought about in any of those sports. var, in this incarnation, has been implemented as a marketing tool, not a tool to improve referee’s lives or performances.
Yeah, last night's game was a little unusual in that basically all of the big calls were clear cut (other than the usual irritation with tight offside calls) but even so, the matchday thread had plenty of comments saying that Romero's sending off wasn't a red card offence.
When even an obvious decision like that one divides opinions, you can see why there's been so much moaning about corruption and incompetence since VAR was rolled out. It's all become incredibly toxic. A horrendous atmosphere in which to be referee. Which I'm sure will only make the abuse aimed at grass roots referees even worse.
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Great post.
The crazy thing is that other sports provide very obvious models for doing video assisted review in a competent way that doesn’t overly slow the game. This isn’t some inscrutable and massively complex problem that can’t be solved. It’s just incompetence and defensiveness from PGMOL, nothing more.
'Clear and obvious' seems intuitive, but in practice a VAR team usually spends minutes minutes discussing it before making a decision--and the decision is later disputed by half the people watching, so it is totally illogical by definition that there could have been a clear and obvious error.
The key word here is "interpret". And the way the rules are, refs are indeed looking for reasons to interpret plays differently for United. This isn't a conspiracy. It's a fact. We score, and they look for reasons to disallow the goal. If Maguire had kept the Fulham player from getting to the ball, I'd completely agree and say that it was offside. But he didn't. He just went for a ball that he couldn't get to. No interference. This is why the goal has to stand. But once again, and you are proving it yourself, people look for reasons to disallow our goals
Even more fundamentally, if you’re only overturning “clear and obvious” errors (whatever that means) then the system from the start hasn’t been designed with the goal of arriving at correct decisions. You’ve fecked it from the beginning because you’re worried more about protecting the referees than the integrity of the game.
Challenge an opponent for the ball. No.
Attempt to play a ball which impacts an opponent. No
Make an obvious action which impacts an opponent. No
you should go into politics. Your intellectual dishonesty is next level. There are some key words you left out there bud...
I always thought your jesting and joking is disturbing but it's when you're serious that you cause nightmares.
For what it's worth I think you are 100% correct.
This kinda shows how the horse has left the stable with VAR now.
The really hilarious thing about that is - VAR probably wouldn't overturn it!
It often feels like referees have some sort of contempt for fans for not knowing obscure technicalities of the rulebook that may justify certain decisions. The way that VAR is currently being employed is essentially leaving fans behind. We don't know the justification for decisions and they are not meaningfully explained to us, having some referee go on TV days later and give no insight beyond 'yeah the ref got that one right' does nothing to combat the feeling that they're protecting referees rather than getting everyone else on board with why such and such decision was made.
I think a time limit on VAR reviews would go at least some way to solving the issues we're seeing.
There would still be inconsistencies, and there always will be, but a big part of the problem is that some incidents are given far more scrutiny than others on a seemingly arbitrary basis.
This would also go some way to operationalizing the "clear and obvious" aspect of the reviews. You can quantifiably say that if the referee cannot be determined to have made an error upon a review of a minute and a half, then a clear and obvious error has not been made and the decision made by the on-field referee stands.
There would still be inconsistencies, and there always will be, but a big part of the problem is that some incidents are given far more scrutiny than others on a seemingly arbitrary basis.
This would also go some way to operationalizing the "clear and obvious" aspect of the reviews. You can quantifiably say that if the referee cannot be determined to have made an error upon a review of a minute and a half, then a clear and obvious error has not been made and the decision made by the on-field referee stands.
The trouble with a time limit is that you will see VAR assistants accused of slow-walking decisions in favour of certain teams so obvious decisions are not made because they are checking too many angles are are not certain in the given time frame.
They just need to get rid of freeze framing and slow motion replays. If something is clear and obvious it should be immediately so based on normal speed replays - people want VAR to intervene when referees make huge feckups, not when someone's toenail is offside.
Surely the solution here isn’t to introduce even more barriers that prevents us from reaching correct decisions, and further increases the likelyhood of same situations but vastly different outcomes.
That's a fair shout but I honestly don't think there's a solution where you won't see some people crying foul besides just abolishing it, and even then we'll just go back to people accusing the refs themselves or being biased.
For me the benefits of a time restriction in terms of improving the flow of the game and putting a quantifiable definition on the term "clear and obvious" outweigh the potential drawbacks.
I don't think VAR in its current state has really brought us any closer to reaching the "correct" decisions, except where offsides are concerned. I think a time restriction would at least improve consistency.
Sometime the best solution of all is already right there, lodged in your subconscious....
Best part about that is if it's a penalty, it should also be a red card (not saying that it should be a penalty). There is no attempt to play the ball, so if he gives the spot kick, he also has to send the player off. Just shows how poor the refs are that he doesn't even know that
Refs are clueless, worst bunch I've ever seen in the prem.