Get rid of VAR NOW! We want our game back! (...or not, some are happy)

VAR - Love or Hate?

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darko said:
It's better than pre-VAR.

People bitch about the offsides but they are close to 100% correct as you can get.

As for the other calls, it's still subjective but they can't say that they didn't see it.
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Premier league VR is the worst thing to happen to football in my time watching the game.

It's a total disgrace.

At least before there was some excuse for the awful refereeing.

Riley must be sacked. Full investigation in to VR and the referees launched and frankly the seasons a right off.

Not even joking, not remotely a level playing field so why continue to pretend?
 
Wow. Bournemouth v Burnley. VAR overturned a Bournemouth goal and awarded a penalty to Burnley down the other end of the pitch. The game went fro 1-1 to 2-0 for Burnley.

What I don't understand is why Mike Dean couldn't have checked the footage himself. Why are refs so reluctant to look at it?
 
The system is fine, the idiots using it are not. Don't discard the system, replace the muppets using it.

How on earth can Maguire and Lo Celso stay on the pitch but 1/10th of someones shoulder being offside gets a goal ruled out when the definition of the service is to correct clear and obvious errors?
 
Rafaeldagold said:
We’re only talking about VAR in football , not technology in any other institution.

A) it’s not that it isn’t perfect- it’s awful. It’s not even half good.

B) how can it get better?? It’s ALWAYS going to be another ref making a subjective decision after a replay. Please explain how this can be improved upon?
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The protocol around the decisions can be improved.

For example, in the first 90 games of this season not a single penalty was awarded by VAR in the PL. Which was clearly stupid as that would mean they were arguing that not one penalty was missed by a referee in those 90 games. So they tweaked the protocols VAR operate by, which then resulted in them being able to identify and overturn some incorrect penalty calls, which was an improvement.

So that was a simple change that improved how VAR was operating. If you have a lot of those simple changes then VAR starts working a lot better. That's how you get best practice in terms of how VAR should work.

It will always be a ref making a subjective decision but they don't make those subjective decisions ex nihilo. They do it based on the rules of the game, the interpretations of the rules of the game that are provided to them by IFAB and the protocols they're given in terms of how VAR is supposed to be used. If those rules, interpretations and protocols improve then you end up with better subjective decision making.
 
Schmeichel's Cartwheel said:
The system is fine, the idiots using it are not. Don't discard the system, replace the muppets using it.

How on earth can Maguire and Lo Celso stay on the pitch but 1/10th of someones shoulder being offside gets a goal ruled out when the definition of the service is to correct clear and obvious errors?
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Agreed. Should be more of a "Oi ref, you may missed something here, go and take a look." That way the game stays in control with the referee at all times and they are able to make a better decision. As the title says, it is an Assistant Referee.
 
ROFLUTION said:
Out of curiosity, how big a sample size of games do you want before you think we have seen the best version and use of VAR?

IMO You cant just blame the people or put much more belief in the people behind the screens - after this many games there's not a great reason to think the refs behind it will get much better. Maybe this is actually about the level it can perform.

VAR currently has a sample size of about 300 games, which in statistics usually is a good amount to judge the true level of performance, so that "unlucky" and overrepresentations of errors can be ruled out
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Well IFAB said it could take 10 years for football to get to grips with how should VAR work, based on how the introduction of similar technology in other sports played out. So that gives you some idea of the timeframe they're looking at.
 
Bestofthebest said:
Just heard Nottingham Forest had a goal disallowed because the corner was taken with the ball in the wrong place. This was disallowed by VAR but I thought it was the linesman’s job to ensure correct positioning at corners. Are officials becoming lazy due to VAR? This is all making a good idea become a laughing stock because of poor decision making by the people at Stockley.
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They don't have VAR in the championship, one of the officials spotted the moving ball and got the goal disallowed.
 
Schmeichel's Cartwheel said:
The system is fine, the idiots using it are not. Don't discard the system, replace the muppets using it.

How on earth can Maguire and Lo Celso stay on the pitch but 1/10th of someones shoulder being offside gets a goal ruled out when the definition of the service is to correct clear and obvious errors?
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I think with offsides you have to be consistent across the board. You could have a situation in one game where one team scores a goal (no flag) which was allowed when the armpit is off and then second half the same linesman flags for offside when the other team scores and low and behold only the armpit was off. However, that goal is not disallowed and it was luck of the draw which team had the linesman flag for the goal or not. OR what if the lino flags, the ref disallows it but VAR says 'oh he was actually onside by a fraction of a millimetre', is that clear and obvious?
 
sullydnl said:
Well IFAB said it could take 10 years for football to get to grips with how should VAR work, based on how the introduction of similar technology in other sports played out. So that gives you some idea of the timeframe they're looking at.
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10 years of possibly this shite?! :eek: Gotta say I'm not impressed.

In 10 years we've all forgotten how the normal football was anyways, and then we'll probably never go back as it's just how things are. Still can't believe we've destroyed a game that has worked fine for over a 100 years.
 
Hephaestus said:
They don't have VAR in the championship, one of the officials spotted the moving ball and got the goal disallowed.
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OK. Just heard it on TV and got it wrong. Well spotted. Although I understood it to be an incorrectly placed ball. However, how are officials missing these things so often and correcting them so slowly. Also, in the Europa cup during the week there was an instance of a player stealing yards at a throw in and the linesman stopped it, made him go back then allowed him to steal the the yards anyway. This annoys me in almost every game I watch.
There have been two incidents of what appeared to be red cards in the Prem. this afternoon, one of which was later corrected after about 20 mins so something is wrong. I am so disappointed in VAR after supporting it’s introduction but feel let down by the officials reviewing the situations for several minutes and still getting it wrong. Not that surprising when the people checking them are ex referees, or is that assumption wrong? Certainly the incident at Sheffield Utd was reviewed by a Championship ref.
 
Disgrace so far today.

System is being manipulated imo by human bias for whatever reason.

No sane viewer could watch this match so far and say Leicester have deserved 0 penalties compared to the one Man. City were awarded so far.

Spurs game had a ridiculous non award of red card.

Will reserve judgement on Burnley-Bournemouth until I've seen the highlights but that had a mad use of it today.

It's really not that difficult to implement but the premier league certainly have made it very difficult for the refs on the pitch. All of them still not using the pitchside screens is winding me up.
 
In the past, if the ref missed a violent offense meriting a red card that was caught on television, the player could still be made to serve a three match ban after a review by league officials. This definitely happened to Diego Costa, as well as few others I'm having more trouble remembering. Why is this not also the case with Lo Celso, given that the VAR powers that be have agreed that it should have been a red card (and almost certainly a three game suspension)?
 
Watching highlights of the City game now and it is just beyond a joke now. De Bruyne blatant handball (much worse than the handball for the penalty he gave City) and City keeper clearing out a Leicester player and the ref gives nothing. Hopefully, fans can start getting mass protests going to scrap this garbage. It has probably added even more pointless controversy and delays rather than solved anything.
 
The system as such is fine. Its the humans using it who keep making mistakes.
 
For me VAR just replaces 50/50 decision with what be had before, referees 50/50 decisions.
Look at the reactions on , say penalty decisions. Manger of team who concedes it says VAR is flawed and the other manager says VAR correctly awarded it. For me, offside decisions, goal line calls are clear cut and cant be contested but VAR steals passion for celebrating a goal when 1 minute later the ref blows the whistle and makes the dreaded VAR review square.
 
It's bordering on idiotic how VAR is being used in England. There needs to be a massive inquest at the end of this season. Checking every goal to see if it can be disallowed (yes, even if most end up standing) is not what VAR was brought in for. Neither is spotting a rolling ball at a corner when there's a lino standing right there! That's refereeing the game remotely. The ball rolled cos it was windy, just like it did at the goal kick in Brugges and common sense made them let it go. There's an embarrassing lack of common sense in its use in England. And that monitor pitchside...what's the point???
 
Schmeichel's Cartwheel said:
The system is fine, the idiots using it are not. Don't discard the system, replace the muppets using it.

How on earth can Maguire and Lo Celso stay on the pitch but 1/10th of someones shoulder being offside gets a goal ruled out when the definition of the service is to correct clear and obvious errors?
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Flawed argument. Offside is binary. Big toe offside is still offside. Maguire decision can be argued both ways all day long.
 
Okey said:
It's bordering on idiotic how VAR is being used in England. There needs to be a massive inquest at the end of this season. Checking every goal to see if it can be disallowed (yes, even if most end up standing) is not what VAR was brought in for. Neither is spotting a rolling ball at a corner when there's a lino standing right there! That's refereeing the game remotely. The ball rolled cos it was windy, just like it did at the goal kick in Brugges and common sense made them let it go. There's an embarrassing lack of common sense in its use in England. And that monitor pitchside...what's the point???
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This clear and obvious thing seems to have gotten all messed up.

Those handballs yesterday for instance weren't clear and obvious at all. They showed them again on MOTD a bunch of times and it was inconclusive but leaned towards shoulder rather than arm.
 
We had the perfect framework for how VAR works well at the 2018 world cup, I don't understand why every league/competition doesn't follow that model.

Agree with the consensus that the issue is more the people using the tech rather than the tech itself.
 
We've got terrible officials in this country, thus VAR was destined to be a nightmare here. Seem to have terrible ref decisions every weekend this season, so normal service.
 
MikeeMike said:
For me VAR just replaces 50/50 decision with what be had before, referees 50/50 decisions.
Look at the reactions on , say penalty decisions. Manger of team who concedes it says VAR is flawed and the other manager says VAR correctly awarded it. For me, offside decisions, goal line calls are clear cut and cant be contested but VAR steals passion for celebrating a goal when 1 minute later the ref blows the whistle and makes the dreaded VAR review square.
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Yep the whole reason VAR was brought in was because of the constant whining from managers over the years- now they still whine as , surprise surprise, many of the decisions are subjective - who would have guessed??

Well everyone apart from the VAR fanboys
 
I think the system is fine but it’s not being used correctly. I don’t buy in to the crap Garth Crooks was chatting about how you can’t make decisions 30 miles away in a studio looking at a replay because “you can’t feel the speed and heat of the moment if you’re not in the stadium” blah blah. At the end of the day the system did what it was supposed to do for the Lo Celso incident i.e. review a major decision by referring it to assistants who can view the replays. The wrong decision was made by the assistants using the technology which like any other decision is because it’s subjective. The same with the Maguire kick out. Sadly the issue lies with the people making these calls and the lack of consistency (see Leicester vs City), which was a problem pre dating VAR anyway.

What I really don’t understand, and I agree with Neville, is the criticism of VAR’s use in offside decisions. Offside is not subjective, it doesn’t matter if your toe or your shoulder are centimetres offside, that is literally offside! The idea of bringing in a tolerance is ludicrous because you’ll just have the same arguments about how close somebody was to the tolerance level, do you then introduce a tolerance for the tolerance? You’re trading off the passion of a celebration being interrupted for the confirmation that all offside decisions resulting in goals will be made correctly. I’m happy for that trade off, Giroud’s goal against us was offside and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t want to suffer from VAR overruling the linesman then score legitimate goals (which is the entire aim of the fecking sport).
 
Riz said:
I think the system is fine but it’s not being used correctly. I don’t buy in to the crap Garth Crooks was chatting about how you can’t make decisions 30 miles away in a studio looking at a replay because “you can’t feel the speed and heat of the moment if you’re not in the stadium” blah blah. At the end of the day the system did what it was supposed to do for the Lo Celso incident i.e. review a major decision by referring it to assistants who can view the replays. The wrong decision was made by the assistants using the technology which like any other decision is because it’s subjective. The same with the Maguire kick out. Sadly the issue lies with the people making these calls and the lack of consistency (see Leicester vs City), which was a problem pre dating VAR anyway.

What I really don’t understand, and I agree with Neville, is the criticism of VAR’s use in offside decisions. Offside is not subjective, it doesn’t matter if your toe or your shoulder are centimetres offside, that is literally offside! The idea of bringing in a tolerance is ludicrous because you’ll just have the same arguments about how close somebody was to the tolerance level, do you then introduce a tolerance for the tolerance? You’re trading off the passion of a celebration being interrupted for the confirmation that all offside decisions resulting in goals will be made correctly. I’m happy for that trade off, Giroud’s goal against us was offside and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t want to suffer from VAR overruling the linesman then score legitimate goals (which is the entire aim of the fecking sport).
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It’s not ludicrous because the tech isn’t accurate enough to decide mm.
I’m fed up of reading offside is offside, when in terms of var, screen rates and angles. It’s not that black and white And we certainly don’t know for sure whether the toe is accurately offside if we’re going to be that pedantic with it
 
Need to stick with it and then make the necessary changes, They had the same teething problems for DRS in Cricket. I'm only concerned at the clear and obvious error. There shouldn't be any grey area there. If it's a foul, Its a foul. No ambiguity or any of that sort like what we have in Cricket.
 
RedFan84 said:
Need to stick with it and then make the necessary changes, They had the same teething problems for DRS in Cricket. I'm only concerned at the clear and obvious error. There shouldn't be any grey area there. If it's a foul, Its a foul. No ambiguity or any of that sort like what we have in Cricket.
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That's not the way football really works though. There are too many offences that are less "if it's a foul, it's a foul" and more "it's a foul depending on how you judge the context". By definition you're not going to have ambiguity-free subjective decisions.

Which is why I think Var's job should be to refer decisions that are probably wrong back to the ref so he can make the best possible subjective call, rather than trying to decide whether arguable decisions were definitively right or wrong themselves.
 
It does seem to have nullified unfair home advantage as in players or the crowd cant influence the ref as much.
Other than that we need to train VAR only refs. Refs who arent scared of overruling their colleagues. They seem to judge decisions based on the on field refs quirks rather than the rules of the game. Too much is getting through the cracks for it to be otherwise
 
No professional referee, or even casual football fan could look at that Lo Celso stamp and conclude it's not a red card.

If anyone naive enough to think that's an honest mistake, having seen what VR has been up to in other Spurs games this season, I have a bridge I'd to sell you.
 
sullydnl said:
That's not the way football really works though. There are too many offences that are less "if it's a foul, it's a foul" and more "it's a foul depending on how you judge the context". By definition you're not going to have ambiguity-free subjective decisions.

Which is why I think Var's job should be to refer decisions that are probably wrong back to the ref so he can make the best possible subjective call, rather than trying to decide whether arguable decisions were definitively right or wrong themselves.
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Agree. If the ref gets to look at it himself it just needs to be more right than the other decision to overturn. Not this clear and obvious bollocks, just “here’s a better angle, do you still think the same?”
 
What is clear and obvious then - if you're just doing them? Which ones sit right next door to clear and obvious but you don't bother.

Rolling goal kicks that lead to a goal could be let go?

Iffy goals and close offsides could be ignored?

I thought we were after getting more correct decisions? And not deliberately ignoring wrong stuff cos there's been a goal.
 
Anustart89 said:
Agree. If the ref gets to look at it himself it just needs to be more right than the other decision to overturn. Not this clear and obvious bollocks, just “here’s a better angle, do you still think the same?”
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Definitely seems best idea now, I think.

Though the advantage of Stockley Park is that the on field ref isn't the one who is wrong, ever. Draw your own conclusions why we got Stockley Park. And very mainly backing the ref.
 
Anustart89 said:
Agree. If the ref gets to look at it himself it just needs to be more right than the other decision to overturn. Not this clear and obvious bollocks, just “here’s a better angle, do you still think the same?”
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Exactly.

Plus it sells the process better. If the person who made the initial decision is seen to change their own call then it becomes harder for fans to keep arguing that the initial call was correct. Whereas now you could have one subjective opinion overruling another, with no idea whether the on-field ref would actually agree that he made a mistake.
 
sullydnl said:
Exactly.

Plus it sells the process better. If the person who made the initial decision is seen to change their own call then it becomes harder for fans to keep arguing that the initial call was correct. Whereas now you could have one subjective opinion overruling another, with no idea whether the on-field ref would actually agree that he made a mistake.
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Completely agree.
Have Stockley Park do offsides and handballs leading to goals as they’re binary, everything subjective goes to the on-field ref.
 
Gets perceived as ref being questioned all the time? Stockley will not ask him if they think its tricky, ref starts getting intimidated, dissented, surrounded again.

Which has gone away to a large extent.

Think about the Maguire one for example.

I don't know.
 
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