VAR and Refereeing 2025/26 | General Discussion

How come the ref didn't announce it to the crowd? Was his mic not working or something? None of the 75,000 people knew why he was sent off.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Come off it. In terms of the potential for “violent conduct” to cause injury hair pulling is the least dangerous by far. So much so that it’s bizarre for it to get a specific mention by IFAB. Contact with the head or (another specialty of DCL) backing into a player in the air has a genuine risk of causing serious injury. Nobody has ever been seriously injured by getting their hair pulled, on or off a football pitch.
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No question that it´s soft, Pogue.

My point was that he just shouldn´t be pulling hair in the first place.

It´s a no no because hair pulling can cause stress on the neck. Yes, in this case, the force was minimal, but the ref was within his rights to punish what we just cannot have in the game.

As Duffer has said, the bigger issue was with the first goal. It´s a foul all day long and it should have been ruled out.
 
Did the ref make his decision based on a still image on the pitchside monitor?

Are they not suppoed to be shown a clip of the incident?
 
If its a red, its a red but this same ref was refereeing a game when a Fulham player yanked Semenyo's hair and nothing was given.

It seems most things are allowed until it involves a United player.
 
I'm dreading the day these protected cnuts will stand in front of a microphone and explain their fecks up of decisions. Just like players do after the game, if they have a bad game and lose. I'm sure this complex that some referees have "I know you are global superstars and paid in millions, but I will outshine you tonight" will stop as soon as they are asked after the match, like before. Unless the Premier League really wants these controversial decisions talked about.

It's such a crazy thing to be asking the players that are directly punished by this type of decisions to talk about them in a post match, and they are forbidden to do it, while these cnuts are guilt free.
 
If we were normally treated like any other team by refs, getting a red card for something like this can be tolerated. It is technically within the realm of fair interpretation, even if it's as soft as it gets. But it's the way we're given the harshest possible treatment every fecking time, and our opponents are given maximum leniency by those same refs. It's way beyond the scope of coincidence or swings and roundabouts. It isn't even up for debate anymore. Refs are so much more heavy-handed with us than with other teams, and our opponents usually get to do what they want with impunity. It's sickening, and it's worse still how other people deny it and call it a persecution complex when it has been happening just about every week for years now.

Practically every game, one or more of these things happen:
- Opponents are allowed to foul our defenders/keeper and take advantage of this to score
- We're denied an absolute stonewall penalty
- Opponents are awarded the softest penalty imaginable
- We get a player sent off for the barest minimum of light-orange infractions
- Opponents get to elbow our players in the face, stamp on their ankles or similar with no punishment
- Bizarre, unexplained amounts of extra time if our opponents are chasing a goal

Every goddamn week, at least one of those happen. I can barely remember the last time it didn't.

ABU is alive and well, and a number of refs are part of it.
 
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Someone mentioned we have Michael Oliver refereeing us Vs Chelsea?
I hope to god not, because he’s the worst ABU of them all and he’ll love to rub salt in the wounds
 
I am almost more annoyed that DCL was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Look twice at Ugarte before elbowing him in the ribs? Freekick, barely a talking to. Went under one of our defenders challenging for a cross (the Harry Kane special, no free kick). Of course then also the goal, probably missed more from memory. The Ugarte incident is far more of a red card than the hair tug, the referees are just too cowardly to properly punish chargings with elbows first, there was no attempt at anything but being violent against Ugarte there. Which is equally silly considering the talks about the head damage from heading the ball, but there is no concerns about brutes flailing their uncontrollable limbs.
 
Does anyone notice that in all the discussions about this red card, they use either still images or a clip that cuts out the first second of the incident? You know, where DCL smacks Martinez in the face with a flailing arm?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m starting to wonder if we’re barking up the wrong tree with the challenging for the ball stuff. Those rules are specifically intended to address off the ball incidents, hence all of them are when not challenging for the ball. But it doesn’t make sense that you can do all that stuff without being sent off so long as you’re challenging for the ball.
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Yeah it seems a bit mad. So if I'm challenging for the ball (and my name is not Martinez) I'm allowed to forcibly pull their hair our of their head or...
 
visiting villain said:
By the letter of the law (and from the official Premier League website)


https://www.premierleague.com/en/news/4079974

Violent Conduct Red Cards for hair pulls have been the norm for a couple years now, and VAR is only going to increase the number that get given.
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In that short passage there are three issues already with giving the red card.

- he’s challenging for the ball
- it’s not a clear hair pulling action
- there’s no force in it.

So none of the three requisites that all seemingly need to be fulfilled are fulfilled and somehow they’ve got no choice but to give the red card. Yet when Cucurella is running full pelt on the counter and gets his head yanked backwards by a hair pull Howard Webb stands in the studio defending the decision to give a yellow at the referee’s discretion. And now we’re hearing that ”there is no circumstance under which a hair pull is not a red”.

Just like when Casemiro was sent off, we were told ”grab a player by the neck and it’s an automatic red” until Bruno got grabbed by a Nottingham player with no VAR intervention and Dalot was grabbed by Semenyo and suddenly there was cause to not give a red card.

It’s a fecking joke no matter how you read the laws of the game because not even the laws you’ve quoted support giving a red card there.
 
I can’t be doing with the charade of being ‘sent to the screen’; they never disagree with it out of some weird ref backing code, so you might as well save 60 seconds and just agree with whatever you’re told.
 
Interesting that in the CL in both legs the VAR has basically advised overturn on penalties which would never be overturned in the PL. What's crazy to me is that Clattenburg on Amazon is unhappy that this one was overturned because there was contact even though you can clearly see that it was a nothing penalty.
 
Just as well Clattenburg is retired if he believes that should not have been overturned. Never a penalty in a million years.
 
I actually thought it was a penalty. McAllister gets there first and the defender runs into him with his own momentum. Not that i care it was overturned.
 
Gio said:
Just as well Clattenburg is retired if he believes that should not have been overturned. Never a penalty in a million years.
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It was a soft penalty. But once the referee gave it, you can't overrule that as an obvious error, as he did clip his leg.
 
AndrewMac said:
It was a soft penalty. But once the referee gave it, you can't overrule that as an obvious error, as he did clip his leg.
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It is an error because the contact was so minimal it didn't justify a foul.
 
AndrewMac said:
It was a soft penalty. But once the referee gave it, you can't overrule that as an obvious error, as he did clip his leg.
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Two reasons it's not for me. First, Alexis stands on the defender's foot. Second, Alexis's whole movement is away from the ball and to cut across the defender - he makes no attempt to play the ball.
 
PL refs have in general made us believe that if the Penalty is given then it can only be overturned if there's no contact at all. I think it shouldn't be so black & white , penalties are massive and game is being played in terrible conditions at a 100mph so if a ref makes a decision and VAR sees something different then I think we should allow the refs to have a look.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
Interesting that in the CL in both legs the VAR has basically advised overturn on penalties which would never be overturned in the PL. What's crazy to me is that Clattenburg on Amazon is unhappy that this one was overturned because there was contact even though you can clearly see that it was a nothing penalty.
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He sounded properly stupid there when commenting on it. "There is foot contact" x 15

This is the way VAR should be used much more than the English application.

"Hey ref, pen you've given is really soft and MacAllister has gone down theatrically, come over here and have another look", ref takes a look and says "yeah not enough for a penalty, let's make the right decision here".

But people who watch English football are so accustomed to the ridiculously high bar for intervention (unless someone's man bun gets touched) that they shout "IT'S NOT CLEAR AND OBVIOUS BECAUSE LOOK AT THE FOOT THERE IS A SLIGHT CONTACT AND THAT'S ENOUGH TO MAKE A PHYSICAL SPECIMEN FALL DOWN" and forget what the actual fecking point is, which is to get the right decision.
 
The fact that a former head British referee and commentators were arguing that THAT was a penalty for Liverpool sums up a lot of issues United face.
 
What I don’t get about VAR is why it has almost wiped out the possibility of any retrospective action. Walker’s deliberate stamp on Dorgu was missed earlier this season. Clear red. Ref and VAR misses it (edit: chooses to miss it) so it’s just forgotten about. Proper odd.
 
What’s also annoying is I remember the Cunha incident a few games back. The amount of analysis that went into which way he was pulled and what direction he fell in was crazy. Here all they care about is was there contact? Yes so it’s a penalty.

If that was our player they’d be analysing why they fell like they’d been pushed in the back instead of tripped up. We simply don’t get stone wall decisions like others. Sesko could get two footed in the head and there would still be arguments.
 
AndrewMac said:
It was a soft penalty. But once the referee gave it, you can't overrule that as an obvious error, as he did clip his leg.
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Had this conversation with someone last week but isnt clear and obvious only a PL thing? It doesnt exist anywhere else
 
Wumminator said:
The fact that a former head British referee and commentators were arguing that THAT was a penalty for Liverpool sums up a lot of issues United face.
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The fact that they were so adamant and vocal about their certainty is also very worrying. Gobsmacked, to be honest. It's either extreme bias towards an English side (which I do think plays some part in it) or just utter stupidity. Or both.
 
Watching the CL last nigth.

Olmo penalty shout
Barca red card
Barca keeper caught the ball outside the box

Only one of these was brought back on review to be corrected.
 
Wumminator said:
The fact that a former head British referee and commentators were arguing that THAT was a penalty for Liverpool sums up a lot of issues United face.
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I mean it's the league as a whole really and we seem to be copping it non stop at this moment in time. The standard of officiating in the PL is, I think fair to say, abysmal and probably the worst of any of the top leagues in Europe.

I don't suspect that there's any urgency to improve it either as the controversy and talking points are what they rely on to get people tuning in every week.

VAR is blatantly not being applied correctly or consistently either. We have referees scared to make decisions on the pitch as they think VAR will step in to help them and on the flip side when they do make a (wrong) decision a lot of the time VAR actually doesn't step in because it's not "clear and obvious" or they don't want to be seen to undermine the ref. It's madness.
 
Oranges038 said:
Watching the CL last nigth.

Olmo penalty shout
Barca red card
Barca keeper caught the ball outside the box

Only one of these was brought back on review to be corrected.
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He also missed at least 3-4 clear corner decisions. And how Atletico got no yellows despite constant tactical fouls was insane
 
Has a ref walked to that stupid screen after var alerts him and ever stuck by his initial call?
 


Precious set of bellends

I can 100% guarantee refs here worse then "your a fecking joke" every single game and nobody ever gets banned.
 
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