VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion

The rule isn't stupid, you can't play volleyball in the penalty area and yes the ref has been utter shit and guessing his decisions.
 
How the hell did AWB get a yellow and Silva not? Silva's was a technical foul (with basketball terms). He was just pissed and kicked Shaw.
 
Ericksen does nothing, we had better have an extra attacker.
 
Since there is no FA cup thread I guess this it it. united really need to get a goal or Pep will attain status of the best which will be unbearable.
 
Why did grealish put his arm back up?

Twisting out of the previous jump, an inadvertent movement of the body. Maybe can be interpreted possibly intentional in slow mo.

Either way this one wasn't really a VAR issue, more a laws one. I don't see it as a pen, but given current reading you can see why it is given, still horrendously soft. The avalanche of soft pens that VAR has brought on (and the reaction in game threads claiming everything as a pen) is one my least favourite consequences of VAR. Especially as someone who played a lot as a defender.
 
I see some of those Football "Funny" FB pages were pushing the David Coote myth again yesterday. The amount comments underneath still willingly believing it and going on about how "Ferguson still has influence at the FA" :wenger: :wenger:
 
I am seeing this angle for the first time… This actually looks like a pen. Unfortunate maybe. But the movement of the hand changes the trajectory of the ball completely. Going by the rules looks like a VAR check at least… And why does Taylor look like he is saying that the hand is stuck to the body? It’s obviously not.

 
Man, refereeing discussion is a bit fecking exhausting at this point. After essentially every single bloody game, fans of both sides come away thinking that the ref was shite and, of course, that their team was hard done by.

The FA Cup final was a prime example. On the one hand, you had City fans and ABUs lamenting the fact that the penalty was given for a "ridiculous" handball and that Casemiro wasn't shown a "clear red card". And on the other hand, United fans are enraged that Wan Bissaka was booked for a soft challenge on Grealish whilst Bernardo Silva received no such booking for his less soft challenge on Shaw.

Honestly, and I say this as someone who has in the past been just as guilty of being irrationally angry at referees, I seem to be one of the few people who didn't think Paul Tierney did such a bad job. This was a game where the stakes and consequently the tempers were high, and where both sets of players were taking liberties in mouthing off at the officials. In spite of this, it never really boiled over and ended up being quite a good game of football. I think the fact that Tierney was generally willing to give players a talking to rather than being card-happy played a big part in this.

Now, does this mean I think he got all his decisions correct? No. But with the majority of those I disagreed with, I can see why he gave them the way he did. The Wan Bissaka booking, for example. I don't think this should've been a yellow card. However, the reason I'm able to be so sure in that is that I got to see replays from five or six different angles. Paul Tierney had to make his decision on the basis of what he saw in real-time, and to be honest given the way that Grealish sold the foul I can understand why the ref would give the card.

I guess if there's an overarching point to this rambling post, it'd be that what happened to Anthony Taylor recently has made me reflect on how football treats its officials (and I won't pretend for a second that I'm not included in that). Their "mistakes" are quite possibly the most routinely scrutinised of any person on a football pitch, they receive almost no credit for any situation they manage well, and it is deemed tolerable for players, coaches, and fans to consistently harass them throughout the match. All of this whilst being, on average, the least highly paid of any of the 23 people on a football pitch by far.

There are a number of reforms that I think need to happen to improve the refereeing situation in football, but that's for another post.
 
I am seeing this angle for the first time… This actually looks like a pen. Unfortunate maybe. But the movement of the hand changes the trajectory of the ball completely. Going by the rules looks like a VAR check at least… And why does Taylor look like he is saying that the hand is stuck to the body? It’s obviously not.


He’s a woeful referee. I don’t even think he sets out to be this bad, it comes naturally to him.
 
I am seeing this angle for the first time… This actually looks like a pen. Unfortunate maybe. But the movement of the hand changes the trajectory of the ball completely. Going by the rules looks like a VAR check at least… And why does Taylor look like he is saying that the hand is stuck to the body? It’s obviously not.


These decisions should only ever be slowed down to establish contact. It changes the view of it from a split-second attempt to get his hand out of the way to something deliberate
 
I am seeing this angle for the first time… This actually looks like a pen. Unfortunate maybe. But the movement of the hand changes the trajectory of the ball completely. Going by the rules looks like a VAR check at least… And why does Taylor look like he is saying that the hand is stuck to the body? It’s obviously not.



It's as much of a pen as the Grealish one is.
 
It's as much of a pen as the Grealish one is.
It's really not beacuse the law is very specific on a hand above the head rarely being natural and is always a penalty (unless the player's arm came up above as a consequence of a tackle etc). See the Shaw penalty against Brighton which everyone agreed was a stonewall penalty.

That being said, I think the EL one is a pen too because as the ball comes in, the hand moves towards the ball and out from the body.
 
This is a penalty as the rules currently stand. The refs did nothing wrong, but the rule is daft. Common sense says this should never be a penalty, but they have put a rule in such a way that this should get called every time. When you are going up for a ball and coming down, the movements of the arms are a little bit unpredictable. It depends how balanced you are going in and coming down. Your arms can actually go back up as a balancing reaction not as a blocking the bal instinct. Stupid rule...period.

So it was not a VAR issue. VAR did its job.
 
This is a penalty as the rules currently stand. The refs did nothing wrong, but the rule is daft. Common sense says this should never be a penalty, but they have put a rule in such a way that this should get called every time. When you are going up for a ball and coming down, the movements of the arms are a little bit unpredictable. It depends how balanced you are going in and coming down. Your arms can actually go back up as a balancing reaction not as a blocking the bal instinct. Stupid rule...period.

So it was not a VAR issue. VAR did its job.

This.

As the rule is currently interpreted, it's a handball. But there was nothing about Grealish's reaction that indicated any intent to make himself big to block the cross.
 
This is a penalty as the rules currently stand. The refs did nothing wrong, but the rule is daft. Common sense says this should never be a penalty, but they have put a rule in such a way that this should get called every time. When you are going up for a ball and coming down, the movements of the arms are a little bit unpredictable. It depends how balanced you are going in and coming down. Your arms can actually go back up as a balancing reaction not as a blocking the bal instinct. Stupid rule...period.

So it was not a VAR issue. VAR did its job.
Grealish? He isn’t just coming down, he’s sort of spinning around.
You don’t need your arms up past your neck to jump high. It’s just a stupid mistake from Jack.
Funnily enough I don’t think that’s penalty if he’s standing on the ground.
 
In the matchday thread there was mention of Haaland hitting a United player in the face. There was no mention by commentary that I heard in-game and there was never a VAR check to review for potential red card that I'm aware of. Should a potentially intentional arm/elbow to a face/head warrant a VAR review?
 
So after last week when all the pundits across bbc, sky, itv, talksport, espn etc.. were saying how terrible it was for how the English ref got treated in the aftermath of the europa league final, now one week later they back to hammering the fa cup ref for giving a pen and not sending casimero off, bunch of hypocrites that are happy to fuel the bashing of refs when it suits them
 
If England get a penalty like that in the future. Guarantee we won't be hearing from Lineker, Jenas, Richards et all about how the "rule" is ridiculous and needs changing.

His hands were up ffs
 
If England get a penalty like that in the future. Guarantee we won't be hearing from Lineker, Jenas, Richards et all about how the "rule" is ridiculous and needs changing.

His hands were up ffs
Lee Dixon on commentary called it one of the worst ref decisions he's ever seen, no surprise he's a Man City fan
 
Where was all this outrage about the handball rule when Luke Shaw did it vs Brighton? Apparently when you jump it's natural to have your hand in the air :wenger:
 
I had a dream Everton were playing Villa and we got a penalty for handball. They were appealing but VAR couldn’t be used because the person operating the VAR camera was too busy filming ducks that on the pitch.
 
We need the refs and VAR to be bang on form tonight to ensure City cant use their usual cheating tactics, hopefully tbings like Grealish's diving and Rodri's delibrate fouling wont be allowed to go unpunished.
 
Never a handball or 2nd penalty that, his hands were tooked in to his chest and it was close proximity.

Wrong decision by the ref and VAR.
 
Never a handball or 2nd penalty that, his hands were tooked in to his chest and it was close proximity.

Wrong decision by the ref and VAR.

Did everything he could to keep his hands tucked into his body and then as he turned they naturally came a few inches out, scandalous decision that will be forgotten about in 5 mins.
 
Just when I thought that I was finished with English refs for a while.

Chris Kavanagh was the VAR ref for the Iceland-Slovakia game. Slovakia's winning fluke goal was scored with the hand.
 
The Norway-Scotland game had some fun as well. Haaland gets a pen for a blatant dive but 2 mins before a Scotland defender tried to wrestle him to the ground inside the box and it just gets...ignored.

Some might say that it is not VAR's fault, but the people operating it, but VAR is the people operating it.
 
Mateu Lahoz is having a mare tonight. He’s refereeing France v Greece, and missed quite a lot of penalties for France during the first half.

He finally gave one now, but only after VAR review of a high boot in Griezmann’s face from a greek defender. The greek defender still only got a yellow…
 
Mateu Lahoz is having a mare tonight. He’s refereeing France v Greece, and missed quite a lot of penalties for France during the first half.

He finally gave one now, but only after VAR review of a high boot in Griezmann’s face from a greek defender. The greek defender still only got a yellow…

Why it is retaken though?
 
VAR is killing the game. Ruling out a goal and killing a nice story in a meaningless 3’d place tie in the CONCACAF Nations League.