VAR and Refs | General Discussion | Forest go into meltdown

Eugenius said:

The biggest issue with VAR is clear and obvious. As Mike Dean said, the VARs don't really want their mates on field to look like mugs. I understand not trying to re-referee the game but for red cards and penalties you want the right decision, not "close enough". Especially with not given decisions (eg Grealish) you end up over weighting on-field decisions that the ref may not even have seen properly himself.

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They need to change the mindset (and silly “clear and obvious” wording) and copy rugby.

Rugby TMOs aren’t over ruling or re-refereeing colleagues… they’re giving the onfield official some information that they think is relevant on key decisions. The onfield official can agree, disagree, ask for more angles but it’s still his/her final decision… the difference is any decision is made as a fully (as much as possible) informed one.

Rugby refs don’t see TMOs as interfering and TMOs don’t get upset if a ref says “thanks but I’m sticking with decision”. they’re grown adults

Shinjch said:

I am struggling to understand why so many are offended by the Forest statement. The incompetence needs to be called out regularly, if pundits aren't going to do it then I don't mind clubs wading in.

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I think the problem is the “warning” wording and the insinuation that there is direct bias/cheating. The Clattenberg article is much more reasoned in his wording, and I think most people would agree with what he says there.

Cassidy said:

Publically no, probably never will be.
But if the club made PGMOL aware before the game then there is some evidence somewhere.
PGMOL isn't going to confirm or deny it they never do (this is not the first time its happened)

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PGMOL has a list of affiliations of each referee. I’m sure someone would have pointed out by now if he had ever ref’d a Luton match, so (unless someone does find an example where he has done so) I’d be fairly confident that list says he’s a Luton fan.

Did Gallagher and co say anything about Grealish's handball or since it was the FA Cup Sky act like it doesn't exist?

Shane88 said:

Did Gallagher and co say anything about Grealish's handball or since it was the FA Cup Sky act like it doesn't exist?

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They said it should have been a penalty. Didn’t spend long on it though, probably as they didn’t want to highlight that they don’t have coverage (so only showed a still image).

SilentWitness said:

It's now been claimed by the BBC this isn't the case -

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So the club is lying? Or whoever told the BBC is lying?
At the end of the day, someone is lying.

AWB was enough of a handball for me although it could reasonably have gone the other way, but at least it was given a proper VAR check. As for Grealish, VAR is there precisely for such close calls -- to be clear, it was a stonewall handball -- but VAR didn't even give it a look. Play went on immediately even though the replays shown a minute later showed a clear deliberate handball offense.

Doracle said:

PGMOL has a list of affiliations of each referee. I’m sure someone would have pointed out by now if he had ever ref’d a Luton match, so (unless someone does find an example where he has done so) I’d be fairly confident that list says he’s a Luton fan.

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Just checked and, assuming the list I found is accurate, he’s refereed every other current premier league team at least 5 times in his career but not a single match involving Luton.

NotChatGPT said:

That is the basis offsides are done from now. It's binary.

The technology is accurate enough to give more reliable calls than the linesmen.

I honestly have no idea whatsoever why people are so desperate to make this even worse than it is. You'd essentially have to create a new boundary for when the VAR gets involved for tight offside, then you start arguing if it was tight enough compared to what happened in a different match and so on and so on.

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The technology even semi-automated is not that accurate easily a margin of error between 10-30 cm. Possibly even more. It either needs much bigger margin of error putting in to it where it reverts to the linesman original decision. Or you don't use it and say offside is only given where a player is clearly behind the defensive line. E.g. the daylight rule.

The will always be an arbitrary line somewhere for offside but because it's constantly moving it's very difficult to accurately measure.

lex talionis said:

AWB was enough of a handball for me although it could reasonably have gone the other way, but at least it was given a proper VAR check. As for Grealish, VAR is there precisely for such close calls -- to be clear, it was a stonewall handball -- but VAR didn't even give it a look. Play went on immediately even though the replays shown a minute later showed a clear deliberate handball offense.

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The AWB one was a flat out awful decision by VAR. I can see why the referee gave it but VAR should be looking at the fact he was pulling his arm into his body to try and get it out of the way. It’s just not a penalty, even under the current rules.

VAR definitely looked at the Grealish one. The explanation as to why they didn’t send the ref to the screen, when he clearly hadn’t seen it (as he gave a goal kick) will be interesting. My suspicion is Webb will just accept it was an error, whilst failing to acknowledge that most of these errors are caused by the “clear and obvious” language, and the VARs therefore second guessing themselves, he is so keen to stand behind.

Sylar said:

Its also funny cos people on here (maybe not the poster) have called for ETH to start having a go at the ref. Even listening to Carragher, he was saying that statement would have been fine if the manager said it (bar the luton line)
but weve seen managers / players do this and get fined for bringing the game into disrepute.
This way you wont get one person fined, maybe just the org together, at most. But the one thing it does is it brings it into media attention, which seems to be what Neville/Sky want to avoid for some reason?

Nevilles rant was so odd. Sahas response was more composed and made more sense.

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It's all over the place. Neville's rant is nonsensical unfortunately, he suggested that the manager should come out and complain about the decisions, take the fine, and that will change things. Forest have been doing that all season, and it's changed nothing, so what more is there left for them to do? Their choices were roll over or fight harder, I can't blame them at all for picking the latter.

There's a pretty obvious rot within PGMOL and among the officials in the country. Even putting aside the blatant conflict of interest in referees being paid by club owners, their handling of VAR, delayed adoption of semi-automated offsides, etc, has all been with a focus on self-preservation rather than improving their output.

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Hughes35 said:

I kind of agree with the challenges being remote. The one thing that makes me uncomfortable about it is that by removing these decisions from the on field ref it makes them become passive and just give nothing, then wait to be corrected by somebody else. I prefer them to have the final say. I still think your suggestion is a million times better than the current setup though.

Offside for me is different. If you do it right then it's fact not opinion. I've no issue with offside being called for 0.00001mm if that's a fact. I think this level of accuracy can be reached with the Semi automated offside if we just use feet.

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You can't reach that level of accuracy even with semi-automated because ultimately your still working with a frame rate that will always give you some sort of margin of error.

I think the refs do that more now anyway, don't make a decision and wait for VAR to back them up. If anything in a world where only the players/manager can call for a VAR check you would think they would be more decisive. And ultimately they can do it with confidence knowing if they do make a howler there is a back up for them. If they make a mistake and noone challenges it that will be more on the clubs for not using there challenges correctly.

This happens in cricket where teams waste there reviews on frivolous appeals only to then not have a review available when there is an obvious umpiring howler, it's the captain's that then gets it In the kneck not the umpires.

TheGame said:

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As if Micah Richards is capable of checking 10 different sources. Blatant lies.

Jeppers7 said:

Where can we find them?

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Watched it on highlights online. They showed a different frame before var check.

Even many online fans are glossing over the AWB decision because of the shit show we put on last night. But that is a ridiculous decision, especially after the Grealish one went the other way. And we will continue to get shafted week after week, unless the club and the manager start speaking out.
It is ridiculous that the club keeps its silence given that we are the big news even when we are shit, so the papers can never ignore us.

TheGame said:

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Why are people surprised? I'm more surprised that more teams don't do it. I'm more surprised we haven't said anything about decision going against us just this year alone. We could have 15-20 points more if we didn't get bad calls against us. I wonder when our club will release first statement like this.

I would say that Nottingham did what they needed to do. They stood and protected themself. If TheFA did listen to people there wouldn't be this mess. And the longer they wait on taking right decisions about some things I think more of those kind of statements will happen. Was there this kind of reaction when Liverpool put out their statement? No.

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.



If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

BeforeKeanetherewasRobson said:

They need to change the mindset (and silly “clear and obvious” wording) and copy rugby.

Rugby TMOs aren’t over ruling or re-refereeing colleagues… they’re giving the onfield official some information that they think is relevant on key decisions. The onfield official can agree, disagree, ask for more angles but it’s still his/her final decision… the difference is any decision is made as a fully (as much as possible) informed one.

Rugby refs don’t see TMOs as interfering and TMOs don’t get upset if a ref says “thanks but I’m sticking with decision”. they’re grown adults

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100% this. Plus the fact that rugby lets us hear the communications, so there's transparency.

Forest's third (and best) penalty shout yesterday was particularly galling. On field referee actually signaled that the defender got the ball. Video showed he plainly didn't. Done rugby-style, video official says "nah, mate, never got the ball; come over to the monitor and see if you think the contact was enough for a penalty." Done football-style, it's an absolute black box, and I have no idea what anyone was thinking.

RedDevil@84 said:

Even many online fans are glossing over the AWB decision because of the shit show we put on last night. But that is a ridiculous decision, especially after the Grealish one went the other way. And we will continue to get shafted week after week, unless the club and the manager start speaking out.
It is ridiculous that the club keeps its silence given that we are the big news even when we are shit, so the papers can never ignore us.

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Because it will make zero difference. There are more ABUs in the country than there are United fans. There has been a narrative for decades that referees favour United or are scared to give decisions against us etc. This means, due to confirmation bias, we only need one debateable decision in our favour to 'prove' just how biased the referees are towards us in the minds of all the folk who hate us. Nothing will change.

I often love repsonding to people who claim a United / refereeing conspiracy theory with "It must be the least effective conspiracy in human history these past 11 or so years"

Just look at the number of penalties we've conceded this season alone. Would've been dead easy to use VAR to overturn half of them ifthey really did want to "help united into the CL because of the TV viewing figures"- we'd be 5 points better off just from the Chelsea and Liverpool games alone with even the most basic bit of cheating by the referees

the two we got in our favour recently were correctly made - Bournemouth penalty (given on field by the way by the conspiring referee trying to help united) was only overturned because it was factually outside the box. The offside yesterday was also factual according to the way they do it.

I could make a long list of the bollocks decisions VAR has not helped us with this season, starting with the handball against Spurs away in the second game of the season.

Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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Probably because no one knows what a hand ball is and isn't, anymore. And the defence will be, what about the clear handball from one of the Coventry players in ET?

TheGame said:

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Gaslighting at its finest, not even bothering to address the point made, funny though

Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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Riddle me this. Why do surfers put their arms out like that? Hint. It’s not to make themselves bigger and block a potential cross into the box. Bonus points for telling us whether surfers arms are in a natural or unnatural position.

Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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Just for consistency you thought that the one against with Garnacho was a pen as well?

204Red said:

No one saying this, but that Coventry goal should have stood (and we would have has no complaints losing that game 4-3). If that same call had gone against a United equalizer we would all have been livid.

Time for someone to actually make it so that you judge a player on or offside by where the feet are (not random body parts)... it sounds so simple, but it would fix 99% of the bogus offside calls.

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This post has to be a piss take

Berbasbullet said:

Just for consistency you thought that the one against with Garnacho was a pen as well?

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The Romero one? Yeah, that's a pen.

The Hilton said:

It's all over the place. Neville's rant is nonsensical unfortunately, he suggested that the manager should come out and complain about the decisions, take the fine, and that will change things. Forest have been doing that all season, and it's changed nothing, so what more is there left for them to do? Their choices were roll over or fight harder, I can't blame them at all for picking the latter.

There's a pretty obvious rot within PGMOL and among the officials in the country. Even putting aside the blatant conflict of interest in referees being paid by club owners, their handling of VAR, delayed adoption of semi-automated offsides, etc, has all been with a focus on self-preservation rather than improving their output.

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Yup, you got it in one.

ETH could call out the officials until his face is blue but all he would get would be match bans and big fines.

They have their favourites (and being paid huge amounts to guest referee in countries that own certain clubs obviously has nothing to do with it)

Berbasbullet said:

Just for consistency you thought that the one against with Garnacho was a pen as well?

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This one at home against Wolves wasnt given either

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Or this one

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Cassidy said:

Gaslighting at its finest, not even bothering to address the point made, funny though

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He said "feck" and they fake laughed for 10s, what more analysis do you need !?

Cassidy said:

So the club is lying? Or whoever told the BBC is lying?
At the end of the day, someone is lying.

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@SilentWitness like I said someone is lying

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Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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That’s still frames which is pointless. If you watch the video you can see his arms are where they are because the ball is in flight and he’s half gesturing/half balancing. Before the ball reaches the Coventry player who attempts the cross, AWB’s already moving them tighter to his body as he should be and when it makes contact his arms are virtually tucked in, as they should be. What’s more, if the ball didn’t hit his arm it would have hit his torso and it’s only from a couple of yards.


Even Dermot Gallagher has said this shouldn’t have been a penalty and he will have gone home and washed his mouth with bleach after, before serving himself with 40 lashes.

Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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It isn't unnatural, it doesn't make his profile bigger and it isn't deliberate.

It's factually not a penalty based on current IFAB rules. It was an erroneous decision which the referee gave as not giving it to Coventry would be a more difficult week for them than not giving it for United. Nonetheless, VAR should have overturned it.

Lest we forget, we were told that this was not a handball...

Doracle said:

The AWB one was a flat out awful decision by VAR. I can see why the referee gave it but VAR should be looking at the fact he was pulling his arm into his body to try and get it out of the way. It’s just not a penalty, even under the current rules.

VAR definitely looked at the Grealish one. The explanation as to why they didn’t send the ref to the screen, when he clearly hadn’t seen it (as he gave a goal kick) will be interesting. My suspicion is Webb will just accept it was an error, whilst failing to acknowledge that most of these errors are caused by the “clear and obvious” language, and the VARs therefore second guessing themselves, he is so keen to stand behind.

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On AWB, his arm was out and although you could call it a natural position you could also call it an unnatural position. It was truly a 50/50 call that would be impossible to define in or out as it's a pure judgment call as to why his arm was out even if it's true that he was pulling it in.

VAR made very quick work of its look at replay. It couldn't have been more than 15 seconds. And if they did look at, what the fekk what were they actually looking at? It was clear as day an intentional use of the arm to deflect the flight of the ball.

Garnacho's Shoelaces said:

It isn't unnatural, it doesn't make his profile bigger and it isn't deliberate.

It's factually not a penalty based on current IFAB rules. It was an erroneous decision which the referee gave as not giving it to Coventry would be a more difficult week for them than not giving it for United. Nonetheless, VAR should have overturned it.

Lest we forget, we were told that this was not a handball...

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That's a handball all day long. Robbed!

Bale Bale Bale said:

I don't understand those saying AWB's isn't a penalty. Him bringing his arms back in doesn't negate that they were so wildly out in the first place.

If you're in the area with your arms out like you're on a surfboard then you're just asking for trouble.

"But Grealish" is not a valid defence.

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Are you saying that if AWB was moving with his arms in the position they were in in the bottom shot it isn’t a penalty? Because of course that would be right but when you’re moving at pace that isn’t realistic. The first shot has no bearing on whether it’s a penalty in the same was as putting a picture of a defender two seconds before wiping out an attacker and saying there’s no contact, it’s not relevant.

lex talionis said:

That's a handball all day long. Robbed!

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Yeah but the point is there was no PMGOL apology. No pandering to United like the FA have done to Liverpool, Arsenal, etc. So in the current rules, that's not a handball, by their interpretation. Which means we should get an apology for the Coventry one, which we won't...

TheGame said:

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Wow.. I'm more surprised Alan Shearer actually said something interesting.

SilentWitness said:

Going to be a running saga it seems!

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