VAR and Refs | General Discussion

gazbradley

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One of the strangest decisions I thought about Sunday was sending the ref to look at the monitor. It was a clear handball and red card so why didn’t VAR just tell the ref rather than creating some sort of ambiguity about the situation by sending him over for a second look.
Potentially avoids Silva and Mitrović getting sent off as well as they wouldn’t feel the ref had a choice in the matter which he technically didn’t, it was as clear and obvious an error as you can get
 

Pogue Mahone

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The referee's job, especially at elite level, is nigh on impossible, virtually every player cheats in some way, whether it be diving, exaggerating contact, time-wasting, disputing decisions, pushing, pulling shirts and everything else that goes on

And then there's the microscopic examination by ex-player pundits and fans, most of whom don't understand half the rules themselves

I don't think standards have actually dropped, VAR is just highlighting stuff that used to be missed, VAR is also responsible for referee's passing the buck sometimes and because it exists the decisions have been inconsistent

IMO, if refereeing is to improve, then the players and managers need to take a long hard look at themselves, cut out the cheating and the referee's job becomes easier and their decision making will become better
100%
 

DavidDeSchmikes

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The referee's job, especially at elite level, is nigh on impossible, virtually every player cheats in some way, whether it be diving, exaggerating contact, time-wasting, disputing decisions, pushing, pulling shirts and everything else that goes on

And then there's the microscopic examination by ex-player pundits and fans, most of whom don't understand half the rules themselves

I don't think standards have actually dropped, VAR is just highlighting stuff that used to be missed, VAR is also responsible for referee's passing the buck sometimes and because it exists the decisions have been inconsistent

IMO, if refereeing is to improve, then the players and managers need to take a long hard look at themselves, cut out the cheating and the referee's job becomes easier and their decision making will become better
You're right, but imo it will never happen
 

Pogue Mahone

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One of the strangest decisions I thought about Sunday was sending the ref to look at the monitor. It was a clear handball and red card so why didn’t VAR just tell the ref rather than creating some sort of ambiguity about the situation by sending him over for a second look.
Potentially avoids Silva and Mitrović getting sent off as well as they wouldn’t feel the ref had a choice in the matter which he technically didn’t, it was as clear and obvious an error as you can get
Isn’t that just the way the process works? Presumably so the ref on the pitch is seen to have the final decision. The VAR official isn’t allowed to contradict the onfield decision, just give them an opportunity to have a second look when necessary.
 

Zebs

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Isn’t that just the way the process works? Presumably so the ref on the pitch is seen to have the final decision. The VAR official isn’t allowed to contradict the onfield decision, just give them an opportunity to have a second look when necessary.
Exactly this. It's baffling how many people, co-commentators and pundits especially, who don't understand basic VAR procedure. VAR can confirm an on-field decision, but can only recommend that a referee looks at the monitor if it thinks said decision should be overturned. Therefore the final decision is always with the referee.

Obviously, it's a very rare occasion where the referee sticks to the original decision having viewed the footage on the monitor but it can and has happened.
 

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The referee's job, especially at elite level, is nigh on impossible, virtually every player cheats in some way, whether it be diving, exaggerating contact, time-wasting, disputing decisions, pushing, pulling shirts and everything else that goes on

And then there's the microscopic examination by ex-player pundits and fans, most of whom don't understand half the rules themselves

I don't think standards have actually dropped, VAR is just highlighting stuff that used to be missed, VAR is also responsible for referee's passing the buck sometimes and because it exists the decisions have been inconsistent

IMO, if refereeing is to improve, then the players and managers need to take a long hard look at themselves, cut out the cheating and the referee's job becomes easier and their decision making will become better
On the flip side, referees never give a penalty if they don't see a fall. A player is running outside the box and gets pulled back, the whistle goes off instantly. But if the player gets pulled back in the box when he is about to shoot or make a critical pass, then 80% of the cases, you are not gonna see the whistle, unless the player hits the ground.

And that is only one aspect of it. Look at the Rashford penalty call recently. It is understandable that the referee could not see the foul on Rashford in real time and he assumed Rashford tripped and fell. But the VAR should have clearly seen it. And should have called it. The purpose of VAR was to help refs give things that they couldn't see. But in reality VAR is not used at all in some cases or sometimes it is overused by freezing frame by frame, exaggerating the foul. There are clearly improvements that need to be made and unless more people call them out, it will never be worked on.
 

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The referee's job, especially at elite level, is nigh on impossible, virtually every player cheats in some way, whether it be diving, exaggerating contact, time-wasting, disputing decisions, pushing, pulling shirts and everything else that goes on

And then there's the microscopic examination by ex-player pundits and fans, most of whom don't understand half the rules themselves

I don't think standards have actually dropped, VAR is just highlighting stuff that used to be missed, VAR is also responsible for referee's passing the buck sometimes and because it exists the decisions have been inconsistent

IMO, if refereeing is to improve, then the players and managers need to take a long hard look at themselves, cut out the cheating and the referee's job becomes easier and their decision making will become better
Agree with this.

Sometimes when watching back games from 20-30 years ago there was really poor decisions, such as offside calls where the player was several yards on. But they just had one replay, probably not from a great angle, complained for a few minutes and moved on. Make a decision like that today and it would be lampooned for weeks.

A lot of the problem is managers blaming the referees after the game. They've passed the buck so successfully that rules such as handball have been turned upside down in a doomed effort to achieve consistency. But they diagnosed the wrong cause. It wasn't inconstency that was the problem, it was managers (and fans) unable to accept decisions and take responsibility for performances - which will never change.
 

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On the flip side, referees never give a penalty if they don't see a fall. A player is running outside the box and gets pulled back, the whistle goes off instantly. But if the player gets pulled back in the box when he is about to shoot or make a critical pass, then 80% of the cases, you are not gonna see the whistle, unless the player hits the ground.

And that is only one aspect of it. Look at the Rashford penalty call recently. It is understandable that the referee could not see the foul on Rashford in real time and he assumed Rashford tripped and fell. But the VAR should have clearly seen it. And should have called it. The purpose of VAR was to help refs give things that they couldn't see. But in reality VAR is not used at all in some cases or sometimes it is overused by freezing frame by frame, exaggerating the foul. There are clearly improvements that need to be made and unless more people call them out, it will never be worked on.
On your first point, that's mostly down to players cheating, referees are human, giving a foul outside the box is less consequential than giving one in the box, it shouldn't happen but it's always been that way, given the way players go down it's understandable that when they don't the ref might think nothing happened

VAR needs to be improved no question, there needs to be better clarity in what it should look at and what it shouldn't, and the refs should be mied up to explain the decision IMO
 

Pogue Mahone

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Exactly this. It's baffling how many people, co-commentators and pundits especially, who don't understand basic VAR procedure. VAR can confirm an on-field decision, but can only recommend that a referee looks at the monitor if it thinks said decision should be overturned. Therefore the final decision is always with the referee.

Obviously, it's a very rare occasion where the referee sticks to the original decision having viewed the footage on the monitor but it can and has happened.
Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
 

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Isn’t that just the way the process works? Presumably so the ref on the pitch is seen to have the final decision. The VAR official isn’t allowed to contradict the onfield decision, just give them an opportunity to have a second look when necessary.
Yes it is but some folks don't seem to understand that!
 

Zebs

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Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
True, now that I really think about it, I can only think of a few incidences in the CL off the top of my head. As recent as the last two weeks there was a handball incident which the referee stuck to the on-field decision for despite being told to view the monitors.

But yeah, I can't think of any in the PL.
 

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Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
There's been a few, I vaguely recall one of our games last season where the referee was told to look at a red card for something but didn't give it
 

90 + 5min

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Interesting yet inevitable. Since introducing VAR we no longer accept human error. So any bad decision has to be due to corruption. End result, even less trust in referees, making their job/life even more difficult than it was before.
Nobody thinks that referee have easy job. No job is easy. I think problems would be less if we hade cam and mics on refs and in VAR room. We need to understand decisions. We need to know why some decisions are taken. That would help a lot. It is so easy to do. However, that still doesn't help inconsistency that we are seeing.

Imagine how surprised I was....

This can't be for real?
 

Pogue Mahone

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Nobody thinks that referee have easy job. No job is easy. I think problems would be less if we hade cam and mics on refs and in VAR room. We need to understand decisions. We need to know why some decisions are taken. That would help a lot. It is so easy to do. However, that still doesn't help inconsistency that we are seeing.
We don’t really. Only the players and the managers need to know. That’s why only the players and the managers are able to hear the referee’s explanations over the course of the game.
 

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How long will they actually go on with VAR like this for? I saw something about an emergency meeting in Scotland re. a ridiculous decision there. Not fit for purpose anywhere.
 

Moonwalker

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Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
Pool vs Fulham 2020

Spurs v Brighton, (The incident is at 4.05) same year. Tackle in the build up; VAR gives Graham Scott a second chance, but he sticks to his guns.

It's strange, how few of these we've seen when we have a public at large ready to lavish praise on any individual brave enough to defy the mighty VAR. It might be because by the nature of the beast, an incident like this will likely be something the referee didn't see initially, making it probable that he will then overturn his own decision, and then if he did see it, and made some indication of that, VAR will usually stay out of it. Unless it's really an egregious error, at which point the probability of someone sticking to their initial decision is infinitely low.

It's these selection criteria that make it a rare event, rather than some miraculous suggestive power of a single peer. I imagine they would rather not go through the slight embarrassment of having to admit they missed something, if they could help it.
 

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We don’t really. Only the players and the managers need to know. That’s why only the players and the managers are able to hear the referee’s explanations over the course of the game.
In my opinion we do. We need that so we understand on what grounds some decisions are made. We need to have transparency. Why would it be hard to have mic and cam? It would in no way be disadvntage to referees. It would actually be helpfull.
 

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We don’t really. Only the players and the managers need to know. That’s why only the players and the managers are able to hear the referee’s explanations over the course of the game.
We don't need to know but it would improve matters if they did, it's only a matter of time before a referee gets badly or worse hurt by some moron who thinks he was biased against his team - this is an area that Rugby Union does well, the referee explains what's going on whilst they may not agree at least you know why a decision was taken
 

Pogue Mahone

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We don't need to know but it would improve matters if they did, it's only a matter of time before a referee gets badly or worse hurt by some moron who thinks he was biased against his team - this is an area that Rugby Union does well, the referee explains what's going on whilst they may not agree at least you know why a decision was taken
Agreed it might help defuse things a bit. But they won’t ever mic up the referees because then the whole world will hear the players constantly swearing at them. Which doesn’t happen in rugby, hence the audio is fit for public consumption.

So, once again, it all comes back to the behaviour of the players and managers and the whole culture of the game around the way referees are treated.
 

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Agreed it might help defuse things a bit. But they won’t ever mic up the referees because then the whole world will hear the players constantly swearing at them. Which doesn’t happen in rugby, hence the audio is fit for public consumption.

So, once again, it all comes back to the behaviour of the players and managers and the whole culture of the game around the way referees are treated.
Maybe the VAR ref could be the one to speak once the decision is made, of course it does come back to the players and managers
 

Jeppers7

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The standard of refereeing currently is shocking. Worse than that they are able to make things up as they go and set the tone for games as they wish as opposed to refereeing to the laws of the game.

They are currently getting the respect they deserve, their egos are big enough as it is without blowing smoke up their arses for substandard performances.
 

Bertie Wooster

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The referee's job, especially at elite level, is nigh on impossible, virtually every player cheats in some way, whether it be diving, exaggerating contact, time-wasting, disputing decisions, pushing, pulling shirts and everything else that goes on

And then there's the microscopic examination by ex-player pundits and fans, most of whom don't understand half the rules themselves

I don't think standards have actually dropped, VAR is just highlighting stuff that used to be missed, VAR is also responsible for referee's passing the buck sometimes and because it exists the decisions have been inconsistent

IMO, if refereeing is to improve, then the players and managers need to take a long hard look at themselves, cut out the cheating and the referee's job becomes easier and their decision making will become better
Completely agree.

I'd also add the law makers and the role of the media / pundits to that list that currently makes the referees job nigh on impossible.

All the laws in Football seem to be increasingly vague and subjective compared to most other sports. Including how technology is used. Which helps create more debate and controversy. And the media lap up that controversy - or try to generate it if it's not really there.

But, yeah, much could be improved in the first place with an improvement in the behaviour of the players and managers.

But I can't really see any of the above changing much.
 

DavidDeSchmikes

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Yeah I'm not holding my breath either!
Currently there is a lot of talk from pundits, journalists, etc about respecting the ref/respective punishments. But in the long run, no one (pundits, players, journalists, fans, managers etc.) will learn anything from all this. Yes there will be a few articles saying players should respect the refs, then a few weeks later that sentiment will fade away and we'll be back to screeching at how bad refs and VAR is. Players and managers are not going to cut down on cheating, diving etc. because we've heard the rhetoric of how a player is "entitled to go down"/"using his experience"/"being clever"
 

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If the players and managers decide to play fair, there will be one team that doesn't. You know, to win the competitive sport by getting a competitive edge. When they do win after simulating a tackle and the human ref falling for it, we're back to square one. The change has to come from those in charge of VAR and Refs. Frankly the system is outdated for this time. Actually, by making use of VAR and technology they could take the cheating out of the game completely. You would need to come up with a blueprint for consistency, get some computers involved suggesting the correct decision and have refs stick to it like a script unless they get the better of a million bots.
 

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Didnt it happen last weekend wolves against Leeds for Leeds 4th goal? A blatant pull on traore not given? A Leeds fan actually posted about it in here. @Ekkie Thump possibly?
Yes it did. We were all convinced he'd disallow the goal. Couldn't believe he decided to let it stand.
 

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Currently there is a lot of talk from pundits, journalists, etc about respecting the ref/respective punishments. But in the long run, no one (pundits, players, journalists, fans, managers etc.) will learn anything from all this. Yes there will be a few articles saying players should respect the refs, then a few weeks later that sentiment will fade away and we'll be back to screeching at how bad refs and VAR is. Players and managers are not going to cut down on cheating, diving etc. because we've heard the rhetoric of how a player is "entitled to go down"/"using his experience"/"being clever"
There are ways to deal with all this but there has to be a will to do it from the rule makers

Most of the cheating and such like will stop if there are punishments including retrospective ones, a sinbin should be considered as an in-game option as well, it would be chaos to start with but once teams start dropping points they'll cut it out - will it happen, probably not!
 

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Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
A couple years ago in a game between Man United and Chelsea there was a disputed handball between I think He Who Must Not Be Named and CHO? Don't remember who the ref was but I definitely recall them going to the monitor and ignoring what the VAR had said.
 

Anustart89

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Has it happened in the PL? I can’t think of any examples.
According to Dale Johnson's VAR review there's been four this season. Leeds v Wolves over the weekend, and

https://www.espn.co.uk/football/eng...ted-newcastle-offside-goal-forest-wolves-rage

Michael Oliver: Rejected overturning a penalty awarded to Nottingham Forest for handball by Bournemouth.
Thomas Bramall: Rejected awarded a penalty to Brentford at Bournemouth.
Andy Madley: Rejected disallowing a Fulham goal for handball against West Ham.
 

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Ah, yes, thanks. I am a philistine when it comes to computer shit.
I spend all day on one!

A decent VPN is worth paying for if you have the need + if your internet is fast enough it's a good security measure, I use Surfshark but there's plenty of decent ones out there, free ones tend to work for a short time and then fail so not reliable