VAR and Refs | General Discussion

[Josep Dowling]

United have been dreadful but we could easily have 6-9 more points but for the incorrect VAR interventions against Spurs, Arsenal and Brighton.

Exactly. Because United have been so poor the officiating against us is being ignored. Getting fed up with the fact when a decision goes against us it’s blanked by all media outlets. How come the ‘subjective’ offside wasn’t analysed on MOTD or Sky?

The PGMOL is a corrupt organisation. At this point they cannot be this inept. It’s a bunch of power hungry men in a closed network. It’s time for them to be micced up so everyone can understand their decision making.

They need to get the offside system used in the World Cup next season. The less responsibility given to them the better.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

You can't separate the two though. If it's humans using the technology, there's always scope for mistakes around implementation, as we've seen. Plus some decisions are so close and subjective, 50% of people will think it's wrong whatever.
I don't think managers should be berating referees all the time- it feeds onto the pitch and also breeds the lack of respect that sees sunday league referees get beaten up.

This is spot on. Part of the whole narrative which makes VAR such a waste of space is this stupid idea that it somehow removes human fallibility, or the fact that there can be very different opinions on the same slo mo replay. Offside calls are the only VAR decisions that avoid subjectivity. But the VAR offside system just creates all this bollox where goals are disallowed because a player’s armpit is few centimetres too advanced, or whining about frame rate and the thickness of lines. Plus fans have to wait to properly celebrate a goal if there’s even the tiniest hint of offside. Every. Fecking. Time.

The one and only officiating technology that has improved football as a sport is goal line technology.

 

[Oranges038]

I don't think VAR has ruined the game. Its the incompetent referees who use it have caused all the problem. There is no coherent understanding of rules between them and keep changing those on a weekly basis.

I would like the managers speak out more often. The inconsistent refereeing will only continue to happen. This is a result of over-protection of referees who are just not good at their job and who have no accountability whatsoever. They know that they can do whatever feck they want without having to prove anything to anyone.

There's a level of incompetence, but so many decisions are 50/50, there's a level of scrutiny on every decision now, that no matter what someone will be pissed. An even then most people still can't agree whether of not it was the right call.

Let's say they rule that Newcastle goal out, for the ball being out or the foul by Joelinton or offside. The shoe would be on the other foot with Howe having a moan.

That being said, there's a lot of fairly obvious decisions that they get outrageously wrong, you look at Oliver pulling Utd game back for that penalty last week. In hindsight it's 50/50 call, but if they can pull it back for that. Why don't we see it done for other clear fouls that were missed.

Guimares gets away with a filthy elbow yesterday - apparently not a clear and obvious error. Palhinha did something similar last week, should have been off, then goes and scores an equaliser.

Newcastle got a dodgy penalty against Wolves last week for little or no conatct, Wolves had a player dragged down - no penalty. Sheffield Utd got a penalty yesterday for a clear dive. But before that they were pissed off about the build up to the Wolves goal.

 

[ZainCRse7en]

Said it before and will say it again. Is it really a pure coincidence that the two oil clubs in this league usually gets these refeereing decisions in their favour? God, i hate football now.

 

[UnitedSofa]

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[Pexbo]

The thing that really blows my mind is that this is a multi-billion pound industry where decisions can be the difference between Champions League football or Europa League, or Premier League football or Championship - both of which have a premium of around £100m to clubs.

So you would think the people refereeing matches were held to account and performed their job to an equally world class standard. But no, instead you have these arrogant little snotbags who are either incredibly amateur at their job and essentially a law unto themselves. How is this just accepted in a sport that has £100’s of millions bet on it every weekend?

I’ve just seen their total salary for a year is about £70k - no wonder they are all taking bungs from the Middle East owners. In a league where the average player makes that every week - what sane individual would want that level of scrutiny for that income? I appreciate it’s twice the national average but when you compare it to the job they do in the industry they are in it… I know I wouldn’t do it for that money.

If they each earned say, £500k or £1m a year you’d have a far higher quality of candidates to choose from and would be left with knuckle dragging smooth brains like Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor. They’d both be pissing around in the conference.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

The thing that really blows my mind is that this is a multi-billion pound industry where decisions can be the difference between Champions League football or Europa League, or Premier League football or Championship - both of which have a premium of around £100m to clubs.

So you would think the people refereeing matches were held to account and performed their job to an equally world class standard. But no, instead you have these arrogant little snotbags who are either incredibly amateur at their job and essentially a law unto themselves. How is this just accepted in a sport that has £100’s of millions bet on it every weekend?

I’ve just seen their total salary for a year is about £70k - no wonder they are all taking bungs from the Middle East owners. In a league where the average player makes that every week - what sane individual would want that level of scrutiny for that income? I appreciate it’s twice the national average but when you compare it to the job they do in the industry they are in it… I know I wouldn’t do it for that money.

If they each earned say, £500k or £1m a year you’d have a far higher quality of candidates to choose from and would be left with knuckle dragging smooth brains like Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor. They’d both be pissing around in the conference.

This all implies that there are obvious “true” answers that these incompetents are failing to spot. I defy you to find one controversial decision which has got 100% consensus on this place. The whole world is raging about the Newcastle goal this morning but you can easily argue that both giving it and not giving it would have been the correct decision. Likewise the penalty we conceded against City. There is only very rarely a “true” answer for tight calls and there will always be subjectivity for most big decisions in football.

The narrative all this post-VAR moaning creates about officials being corrupt or profoundly incompetent is as damaging to the game as the poxy technology itself.

 

[Ayoba]

They didn't even talk about our VAR decision which is par for the course for MOTD. If it had gone the other way there would have been a 15 minute segment dedicated to it, filled with that obsequious little toad Lineker bemoaning it and an apology from PGMOL etc.

Followed by Talksport discussing it for an entire week, just like they did with the onana v wolves incident

 

[Pexbo]

This all implies that there are obvious “true” answers that these incompetents are failing to spot. I defy you to find one controversial decision which has got 100% consensus on this place. The whole world is raging about the Newcastle goal this morning but you can easily argue that both giving it and not giving it would have been the correct decision. Likewise the penalty we conceded against City. There is only very rarely a “true” answer for tight calls and there will always be subjectivity for most big decisions in football.

The narrative all this post-VAR moaning creates about officials being corrupt or profoundly incompetent is as damaging to the game as the poxy technology itself.

You’re right they’re all doing the best they can in difficult circumstances

 

[Pogue Mahone]

You’re right they’re all doing the best they can in difficult circumstances

Meh. Nobody is perfect and yes, being a referee is difficult. The PL referees are not - and never have been - an outlier in terms of how good or bad they are at their job. Obviously. Equally, some referees are better than other. That’s also nothing new. In the same way some footballers are better than others. A fact that people used to accept without throwing the sort of tantrums we’re getting now that VAR has poisoned the water hole.

 

[rimaldo]

The thing that really blows my mind is that this is a multi-billion pound industry where decisions can be the difference between Champions League football or Europa League, or Premier League football or Championship - both of which have a premium of around £100m to clubs.

So you would think the people refereeing matches were held to account and performed their job to an equally world class standard. But no, instead you have these arrogant little snotbags who are either incredibly amateur at their job and essentially a law unto themselves. How is this just accepted in a sport that has £100’s of millions bet on it every weekend?

I’ve just seen their total salary for a year is about £70k - no wonder they are all taking bungs from the Middle East owners. In a league where the average player makes that every week - what sane individual would want that level of scrutiny for that income? I appreciate it’s twice the national average but when you compare it to the job they do in the industry they are in it… I know I wouldn’t do it for that money.

If they each earned say, £500k or £1m a year you’d have a far higher quality of candidates to choose from and would be left with knuckle dragging smooth brains like Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor. They’d both be pissing around in the conference.

i’ll do it for 70k a year, but i’ll need the flexibility to work remotely, and i only want to work monday to friday.

 

[horsechoker]

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Replay all our defeats

 

[Pexbo]

Meh. Nobody is perfect and yes, being a referee is difficult. The PL referees are not - and never have been - an outlier in terms of how good or bad they are at their job. Obviously. Equally, some referees are better than other. That’s also nothing new. In the same way some footballers are better than others. A fact that people used to accept without throwing the sort of tantrums we’re getting now that VAR has poisoned the water hole.

I’m convinced no sane person without major personality flaws would ever want to become a professional referee for £70k a year. Bump it to £1m and you’ve got a completely different pool of talent to work with.

Also £70k a year in an industry that pays your co-workers that per week and where literally hundreds of millions of £ is bet every match day is just begging for corruption.

 

[Abizzz]

Meh. Nobody is perfect and yes, being a referee is difficult. The PL referees are not - and never have been - an outlier in terms of how good or bad they are at their job. Obviously. Equally, some referees are better than other. That’s also nothing new. In the same way some footballers are better than others. A fact that people used to accept without throwing the sort of tantrums we’re getting now that VAR has poisoned the water hole.

Well it's a lot easier to move on when 1 person made a mistake in a fraction of a second and had no other means than that one view from whereever he was. VAR just confirms that they are pulling the decisions out of their behind at this point.

 

[umairmufc]

Game is dead with VAR.
Football is not the same. The moments in the game is gone its making the sport as a whole look worse.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I’m convinced no sane person without major personality flaws would ever want to become a professional referee for £70k a year. Bump it to £1m and you’ve got a completely different pool of talent to work with.

Also £70k a year in an industry that pays your co-workers that per week and where literally hundreds of millions of £ is bet every match day is just begging for corruption.

I agree they’re underpaid. Although that isn’t a new problem.

 

[stevoc]

I hate conspiratorial bollocks, and I don’t think for a second we’ve been deliberately fecked over… but also I think its pretty mental that we’ve had at least 4 big decisions go against us early season that either would, or has been given to other teams in identical situations.. or created a massive public outcry when they weren’t … and one decision apparently given ‘to’ us (the Obama barge vs Wolves) which was debated as almost a national point of interest for two whole weeks, that I’ve since seen happen several times without nary a mention!

None of which absolves how shit we’ve been in general, but feck me I can’t remember a season where we’ve been so blatantly fecked over so much in such a short time. If feels like we’re still getting fecked off Peps bitching over Bruno’s goal last season!

There doesn't need to be a conspiracy when a run of the mill decision that most teams get every week. Gets spoken about for weeks at a national level, the refs get criticised, they get demoted and their boss issues an apology for their 'mistake'.

The stall was set out right from the off. Either consciously or subconsciously all the refs know what will happen if they make a decision that favours United that turns out to be even marginally wrong.

Easier to just give us nothing. And for VAR to turn over every stone to make sure we get punished to the letter of the law on every incident.

 

[Pexbo]

I agree they’re underpaid. Although that isn’t a new problem.

The big question for me is why, when the Premier League is a bit of a laughing stock in terms of refereeing quality, do the owners of Man City and Newcastle want to pay them a huge premium to referee in their domestic leagues?

Nobody has got a Michael Oliver poster on their wall ffs.

 

[stevoc]

Agree with Arteta's rant about VAR. Those in charge need to be held accountable like managers and players are, instead of hiding. They refs and VAR assistants should never be the focal points of a football match. But every week we're seeing them feck it up.

Thing is its usually the matches between the top 6 that get the attention, but the inept ref and VAR performances are happening in plenty of other games too

The conspiracy stuff about them being out to get United is hilarious btw. They're fecking decisions up across the board, it's absolutely nothing to do with targeting United. Every team is suffering

But United are suffering the most.

 

[stevoc]

This is spot on. Part of the whole narrative which makes VAR such a waste of space is this stupid idea that it somehow removes human fallibility, or the fact that there can be very different opinions on the same slo mo replay. Offside calls are the only VAR decisions that avoid subjectivity. But the VAR offside system just creates all this bollox where goals are disallowed because a player’s armpit is few centimetres too advanced, or whining about frame rate and the thickness of lines. Plus fans have to wait to properly celebrate a goal if there’s even the tiniest hint of offside. Every. Fecking. Time.

The one and only officiating technology that has improved football as a sport is goal line technology.

Well apart from the new subjective offsides.

 

[Rado_N]

Nobody has got a Michael Oliver poster on their wall ffs.

Michael Oliver does.

 

[rimaldo]

The big question for me is why, when the Premier League is a bit of a laughing stock in terms of refereeing quality, do the owners of Man City and Newcastle want to pay them a huge premium to referee in their domestic leagues?

Nobody has got a Michael Oliver poster on their wall ffs.

speak for yourself.

 

[Ayoba]

There doesn't need to be a conspiracy when a run of the mill decision that most teams get every week. Gets spoken about for weeks at a national level, the refs get criticised, they get demoted and their boss issues an apology for their 'mistake'.

The stall was set out right from the off. Either consciously or subconsciously all the refs know what will happen if they make a decision that favours United that turns out to be even marginally wrong.

Easier to just give us nothing. And for VAR to turn over every stone to make sure we get punished to the letter of the law on every incident.

Very well said!

 

[horsechoker]

speak for yourself.

67% battery?

Get your life together man!

 

[noodlehair]

I mean I'm the first to criticise the officials but I don't see how they can win with the Newcastle goal.

If they dont give the goal and get asked why, the answer would have to be "we dont know, we just guessed one of things that happened might have been an offence"

and there'd still be people in here moaning about what an outrage it was to disallow it when the VAR showed there was nothing wrong.

Plus I'm not having that it was a foul or offside. That's just crap defending and goalkeeping. Maybe the ball is out but you're guessing either way. I think we had one this season where they guessed it was out or wasn't out and it was annoying, but either way it was going to be a guess.

Because sports in which it work have always had long breaks in them, so the officials aren’t under the same pressure to make a very quick decision. Plus the issues it’s mainly used for in other sports are more black and white. It’s obviously a lot easier to decide whether a rugby player touched the ball down, or had a foot in touch than it is to decide if a footballer was pulled hard enough to prevent him getting to a cross into the box, or if he fell over because he was avoiding getting clattered vs deliberately diving to fool the referee.

There's a lot of subjective calls in Rugby, and a lot where the correct decision isn't clear. E.g. whether a pass went forward, whether someone blocked a runner on purpose or not, whether a high tackle/collision was wreckless or unavoidable. Often there won't be a conclusive view.

They also quite often make the decision quicker than VAR seems to, and, more importantly, you can hear the communication and process/reasoning. So even if you don't agree with the decision you know the logic behind it and know it was dealt with fairly and professionally, and with consistent application of the rules.

I hate this argument that it cant work the same as other sports, because the only reason it can't is because football doesnt want it to. You'd have officials being exposed as clueless and players being exposed abusing them and acting like children and those are the only reasons there is resistance to it.

Although when you've got people like Arteta behaving like a 10 year old rage quitting a fifa game in multiple post match interviews, or Klopp demanding games are replayed because the referee didnt let Liverpool win, I'm really not sure what dignity football is even trying to protect.

This all implies that there are obvious “true” answers that these incompetents are failing to spot. I defy you to find one controversial decision which has got 100% consensus on this place. The whole world is raging about the Newcastle goal this morning but you can easily argue that both giving it and not giving it would have been the correct decision. Likewise the penalty we conceded against City. There is only very rarely a “true” answer for tight calls and there will always be subjectivity for most big decisions in football.

The narrative all this post-VAR moaning creates about officials being corrupt or profoundly incompetent is as damaging to the game as the poxy technology itself.

Sorry Pogue but this argument was dead in the water the second one of the officials said in a nationally broadcast interview that he deliberately didn't make the right decision because he wanted to protect his mate.

What do you think would happen in rugby if the reasoning came over on the video ref as "yeah it's a red card he's pulled his hair, but don't send him off mate because his team mates will shout at you. I'll just pretend i didnt see it"?

It would just be ok would it? That's a professional and entirely not integrity compromising way for an official to do their job?

Also the point about pay is dead right. 70k a year is only going to get you complete idiots, because simply, that isn't enough money to travel up and down the country away from your family every week, receive dogs abuse from hundreds of thousands of people, be scritinised on international television, have millionaires shout and abuse you in your face, and at the same time be expected to be one of the best people in the entire world at your job. If I was offered that tomorrow to be a PL ref, I'd turn it down without even a thought.

I'm pretty sure top level rugby officials who according to you have a much easier job (which to be fair when you factor in the level of attention and scrutiny on football, they do) earn over twice that, and there is a reason why. Choose the cheapest builder and you will get the sh*ttiest building.

 

[rimaldo]

67% battery?

Get your life together man!

i only ever charge it to 69.

 

[noodlehair]

I’m convinced no sane person without major personality flaws would ever want to become a professional referee for £70k a year. Bump it to £1m and you’ve got a completely different pool of talent to work with.

Also £70k a year in an industry that pays your co-workers that per week and where literally hundreds of millions of £ is bet every match day is just begging for corruption.

How many other professions are there in the country where being one of the top 15-20 people in the country still only gets you £70k a year? And how many of them come with the level of scrutiny you'd get as a PL Referee? It's an insanely low salary.

All you're getting for that is people who arent competent or reliable enough to earn close to it doing anything else, or people who know they can use it to earn money through other avenues on the side.

This is why I find the idea their integrity is beyond question ridiculous. If my employer paid peoole half my salary to do my job, they'd have a team of incompetents who'd be taking hand outs left right and centre, because no one capable and willing to do it properly would even consider going near it. This is how the real world works and football officials exist in the real world the same as everyone else.

 

[Adisa]

Feck whether it's embarrassing or not. I want ETH going after these cnuts every chance he gets. Melissa Reddy makes an excellent point. When Liverpool complained, instead of us using the opportunity to call for changes, we all went tribal and attacked Liverpool.
We need to hear these referees when they are communicating. They don't deserve trust.

 

[Withnail]

Little did we know that we had a much better refereeing system for the last 100 years.

In modern day with VAR technology runned by incompetent idiots, we have surprises every damn week.

This is revisionism. It was shit before and all. Loads wanted it brought in because of how much was being missed by the officials and how many legit goals were chalked off because the refs couldn't review the replays.

VAR isn't necessarily the problem. The referees are more interested in protecting themselves and are not at all consistent in the application of rules. These things can be changed and improved.

Going back to preVAR with the same incompetent officials won't make things any better.

 

[Gio]

The pen given to Sheffield United v Wolves should have been overturned too. Baldock was already going down under no challenge and Silva had pulled out. Just complete BS and another example of complete incompetence in PL officiating.

Yeah, struggling to understand why the ref and VAR have both given that one. O’Neil is right - the ref fundamentally misunderstands what a foul is.

 

[Withnail]

Agree with Arteta's rant about VAR. Those in charge need to be held accountable like managers and players are, instead of hiding. They refs and VAR assistants should never be the focal points of a football match. But every week we're seeing them feck it up.

Thing is its usually the matches between the top 6 that get the attention, but the inept ref and VAR performances are happening in plenty of other games too

The conspiracy stuff about them being out to get United is hilarious btw. They're fecking decisions up across the board, it's absolutely nothing to do with targeting United. Every team is suffering

Except if you look at the stats posted earlier we are the most badly affected in the league by some distance, not that I believe in conspiracy theories.

 

[Withnail]

We get decisions our way too, such as the Bruno/Rashford “offside” goal. But every so often, we will then be punished tenfold. It’s the cycle with refs and us. Nothing new.

That was a legit goal according to the rules at the time. They've changed the interpretation since 'because the game didn't like it'

 

[saivet]

This is revisionism. It was shit before and all. Loads wanted it brought in because of how much was being missed by the officials and how many legit goals were chalked off because the refs couldn't review the replays.

VAR isn't necessarily the problem. The referees are more interested in protecting themselves and are not at all consistent in the application of rules. These things can be changed and improved.

Going back to preVAR with the same incompetent officials won't make things any better.

Chelsea fans still moan to this day about that match against Barca.

Arsenal fans still complain about the Rooney dive to break their unbeaten run.

I've seen United fans moan for years about the offside goal against Porto and the Nani red card.

The most famous one being Maradona vs England.

The pre-var days had plenty of errors and loads of anger at the referees from fans. Things weren't just shrugged off as refs makes mistakes but the game flows well.

 

[Conor]

The thing that really blows my mind is that this is a multi-billion pound industry where decisions can be the difference between Champions League football or Europa League, or Premier League football or Championship - both of which have a premium of around £100m to clubs.

So you would think the people refereeing matches were held to account and performed their job to an equally world class standard. But no, instead you have these arrogant little snotbags who are either incredibly amateur at their job and essentially a law unto themselves. How is this just accepted in a sport that has £100’s of millions bet on it every weekend?

I’ve just seen their total salary for a year is about £70k - no wonder they are all taking bungs from the Middle East owners. In a league where the average player makes that every week - what sane individual would want that level of scrutiny for that income? I appreciate it’s twice the national average but when you compare it to the job they do in the industry they are in it… I know I wouldn’t do it for that money.

If they each earned say, £500k or £1m a year you’d have a far higher quality of candidates to choose from and would be left with knuckle dragging smooth brains like Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor. They’d both be pissing around in the conference.

Much like the reason why there is no unified PL streaming service printing cash for them, I think that the league in general is incredibly successful in spite of the morons running it. There is incompetency from top to bottom, and if you look at it through that lens, it makes perfect sense why everything is utter shite.

 

[Mb194dc]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the decisions yesterday.

In the Utd game, Maguire occupies a defender who could be covering Garnacho and he even lunges at the ball despite being offside. Clearly interfering and offside.

In the Arsenal game, VAR can't judge if the ball is out or not and they shouldn't get involved (said the same for the Rashford one). I don't think it's a foul either for the supposed push and that call should stay on the pitch anyway.

Arteta is just a whinger and lots of people hate Newcastle because they're an oil club now.

 

[90 + 5min]

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Nobody should be surprised. And we are now talking top of the mountain. All those small decisions have gone pretty much to other teams.

When something is simple we don’t need to make it difficult. The question should be WHY and HOW can we being treated different to other teams in negative way? Who is making those calls?
Why isn’t our club, manager, players and fans more vocal about this? Why don’t we demand investigations? Our club is so passive that nothing will change until you start calling them out in a official statement.
We also need to think about ban for certain media and people that are clearly ABU. Nobody invites a bully into your own house. We need to set some standards as a club.

 

[Withnail]

70k for the refs is insane. I wouldn't put up with the abuse and scrutiny for that.

 

[stevoc]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the decisions yesterday.

In the Utd game, Maguire occupies a defender who could be covering Garnacho and he even lunges at the ball despite being offside. Clearly interfering and offside.

In the Arsenal game, VAR can't judge if the ball is out or not and they shouldn't get involved (said the same for the Rashford one). I don't think it's a foul either for the supposed push and that call should stay on the pitch anyway.

Arteta is just a whinger and lots of people hate Newcastle because they're an oil club now.

So Maguire was marginally offside when a freekick came in that sailed over his head but was occupying a defender that theoretically could have been covering the other attacker behind him who is onside and eventually crosses to another attacker who is onside and scores. Yeah if that was applied to every game and every scenario we'd see a lot more offsides and a lot less goals scored.

So by this logic if any attacking player is offside when the ball is played that leads to a goal, then that goal has to be ruled out yes?

As they're potentially tying up a defender who could have covered the onside players who score or assist.

Let's see if that interpretation of the rules gets applied again this season.

 

[Bale Bale Bale]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the decisions yesterday.

In the Utd game, Maguire occupies a defender who could be covering Garnacho and he even lunges at the ball despite being offside. Clearly interfering and offside.

In the Arsenal game, VAR can't judge if the ball is out or not and they shouldn't get involved (said the same for the Rashford one). I don't think it's a foul either for the supposed push and that call should stay on the pitch anyway.

Arteta is just a whinger and lots of people hate Newcastle because they're an oil club now.

Agree, I get it with the Diaz/Spurs thing but this week just seems like such a massive overreaction to me.

Look in the match thread on here for example and you've literally got consecutive posts of "the ball is out"/"looks in to me" and "that's a foul"/"that's never a foul", along with a bunch of people not understanding how offside works. The Maguire one was clear, that's why MOTD didn't go over it for those Utd fans shouting conspiracy. Plus Utd won anyway so who cares. I get the argument over consistency as City had one allowed just like that but what do you want refs to do? Just keep making the wrong decision over and over again because one went against Utd?

The most egregious decisions to me were Guimaraes' forearm/elbow and the pen given against Wolves. The rest were standard debateable decisions that go on all the time and will continue to go on all the time.

 

[Longshanks]

This is revisionism. It was shit before and all. Loads wanted it brought in because of how much was being missed by the officials and how many legit goals were chalked off because the refs couldn't review the replays.

VAR isn't necessarily the problem. The referees are more interested in protecting themselves and are not at all consistent in the application of rules. These things can be changed and improved.

Going back to preVAR with the same incompetent officials won't make things any better.

I think there has to be a happy medium somewhere. The only technological input that has been positive is the goal line technology. Everything else is a bin fire, and massively inconsistent week to week.

Perhaps we should allow reviews only to be called by the captains and they get one review each if they feel there has been an genuine mistake. If there wrong they lose there review, if they are right they get to keep it.

Use semi automated system for offside with a considerable margin of error so we don't get ridiculous offside calls and for subjective calls e.g. penalties, fouls, red cards, handball. The on field ref watches full speed replays of the incident in question from different angles and they then make an informed decision. No VAR input, just a video operator given them a few different replays at full speed.

The idea was to not re-ref the game and only correct clear and obvious decisions. Feels like they have compleatly lost there way with it.

Create a system that can be used to correct genuine howlers and mistakes, currently i think it is being compleatly mis-used.