I think its subjective call because you think its foul, but VAR ref didn't think it is, or at-least not enough for giving penalty.
I personally think VAR should not check in corners, or we will be in situation where in every game we will have penalty decision from corner, and more time wasting for checking every penalty incident.
The problem is it is used for corners so it then needs to be used for every incident that may be a penalty or foul. Otherwise, and there's no getting around this, the game IS quite often going to be decided by some bloke sitting in a room deciding who is going to win.
The handball rule is fine if that's what they want to be the rule, but if you change a decision because the rule says it's handball, you can't not change a decision because the rule says no holding or impeding someone from a corner but you decide that isn't as much of a rule as the handball one.
The issue is that VAR isn't being asked whether it was a penalty/handball. It is being asked whether the referee made a clear and obvious mistake in not awarding the penalty/handball.
In the case of the handball, that's a clear yes under the new rules. If it hit the player's hand, the referee made a clear and obvious error in not awarding a penalty. Handball in this instance is an objective call. Once VAR see it touch the hand, their decision is made for them.
That isn't the case in the Laporte incident as we know that referees allow a certain amount of pulling and dragging at set pieces. The fact that this is an area where referees show subjectivity and discretion makes it harder for it to meet the threshold VAR requires to overturn the referee's decision.
Well that's the line that is being given but in reality this is not what is happening is it?
The whole point of VAR is to get rid of inconsistency and mistakes, and we've seen in the Champions League, in other countries and in the World Cup, that it works very well if you want it to. The difference is that in these cases VAR intervenes when it thinks something has been missed. If it is not obvious the ref can look at it on a screen himself, but there is no picking and choosing which teams it applies to, which incidents, etc. It's a video assistant and it's used as one.
In England we seem to have somewhat deliberately missed the point, and want to allow a single person to dictate when they think it will be of help, by no other criteria than whether they feel like it or not. As if we WANT it to be controversial or to use it as a tool to manufacture situations in games.
We have had situations in England like the Liverpool vs West Brom cup game, where every time West BRom score, the game does not restart for 5 minutes while VAR man desperately searches for a reason to disallow the goal. Offside incidents like the Mata goal where it is disallowed because it might be offside and then a fumbling attempt to make it look offside appears half hour later. Or the Sterling one last week where it is shown not offside, and so the picture is moved forward slightly so it is offside, and it is disallowed. This is before you even get to the whole picking and choosing when to apply it nonsense. The Laporte incident yesterday in any other country would have at the very least been referred to the referee to look at, at which point he would have given a penalty because it was a fairly clear foul...the room for subjectiveness there was very little even for a Tottenham fan.
Every time it is used in England it is inconsistent and suspect. The only time I've seen it used inconsistently outside of England was during the world cup, in England games, because we had such a massive moan off about our players being held and fouled at corners and how it would be a "penalty every time" in the Premier League. Then when it does happen, in the Premier League, and we have VAR, it's just completely ignored...until next week in a differenct scenario when it wont be ignored, until later in the same game when it will be again.
