no. Firstly, I’m not obsessing about it, secondly, I’m commenting about it because I’m a Utd fan.
I think it was a definite pen. For it to be overturned, the error should be “clear and obvious”, it’s not, it’s very subjective. To a large extent, it’s irrelevant whether ultimately it’s a pen or not - it shouldn’t have been reviewed, as it doesn’t fit the criteria to be reviewed.
Sorry about that. The error has to be clear and obvious to everyone on the planet? You'll find a guy that will disagree with even the most obvious things thereby making it debatable. That doesn't make it less obvious to someone else. There has to be some sort of authority, and in this context it's a single ref, a couple of cameras and a bunch of refs in a room. If they think it might be an obvious error, it might be. If it's not, then it's not. Personally I would prefer VAR to be used more frequently to create consistent decisions on situations that might be unnecessarily subjective at the moment. There is no reason why a ref shouldn't be able to make a call like this and have a second look to confirm his decision or check if he was fooled by playacting or missed something. Surely we want more consistently good decisions. I don't think this was a penalty because Bruno got the ball and the contact after didn't impede the players ability to move, he went to ground simply looking for a soft penalty when he felt the contact, because he lost control of the ball. Sometimes pundits say players are "clever" and "it's part of the game now isn't it" other times they call it a disgrace and cheating. It's all subjective, all I know is they aren't consistent in their views. Neither the refs or the pundits.
You can't simultaneously argue that that isn't a clear and obvious foul whilst arguing that WBA's penalty should have been overturned because that was far from clear and obvious.
Both sides' penalties should have stood and by the letter of the law, the retake was correct (much as I despise the monitoring of keepers' feet).
I don't understand why so many in here are being sensitive about it - there's no shame in admitting when you've gotten the rub of the green from the refs, as Chelsea did vs. Rennes recently.
I get what your saying regarding the clear and obvious bit. The way they implement it is horrible and it's clearly subjective either way. I just think that reviewing a clear direct penalty incident should be mandatory if there is doubt. It took less than a minute for the ref to jog over an make a better decision. That part didn't bother me. He overturned his own decision, which makes all other opinions irrelevant. We can disagree with the fact the ref didn't give a penalty, but the reason he blowed his whistle was the wrong decision in the refs mind, proved by his willingness to overturn it. The Maguire incident before that was also interesting as they chose to let it go, the same way they didn't give Martial a penalty for a similar pullback. It's like some decisions are cancelled out by other factors and margins of play. It's all very subjective as it always was, I agree on that part. Making every decision a talking point without knowing what the ref is thinking is dumb, but that aspect wouldn't have been any different without VAR. Refs themselves disagree a lot which is the real problem. Some even think their job is to make the league exiting like Clattenburg admitted to. It doesn't seem like those in charge of implementing VAR really want it to work, so they are just ruining football for everyone to get them on their side.
There is obviously no shame in admitting that, I just think people feel better about "being objective" than actually being objective. It's always some bias in our minds and there is no shame in taking that into consideration whilst holding your view, instead of always going the other way, going against your own club like I know some do. (not saying you do it, but it does happen) I'm clearly biased towards United but I don't think I'm wrong for it either. Sometimes I don't care as much about fairness regarding decisions of other teams, especially the likes of Liverpool etc. However, I feel like there is a definite pull towards panting United in a state of crisis. If we win, it's supposedly undeserved and if we lose it's deserved. I don't think that picture is completely true. I see a game like this and I think the team who had the most quality ended up winning deservedly, despite it being an open game and Johnstone having the game of his life. I think there was very little real controversy and on the big decisions the ref had a decent game.