As someone else said, Oliver doesn’t want to upset Pep for one reason or another.
His neutrality is non existent in these games
His neutrality is non existent in these games
VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
Always like revisiting decisions away from the heat of live watching. Oliver should be dropped for next week. That's how bad those decisions were - even if youre somehow on the fence about the first, the second tackle is as clear a yellow card as you will see and he instantly says no.
Its very very hard to understand why he simply did not want to send a city player off, without starting to think about bias.
Its very very hard to understand why he simply did not want to send a city player off, without starting to think about bias.
Was Oliver by any chance also moonlighting in the UAE recently?
edit. looked it up and yes he was. of course he was. along with Burt, his assistant for yesterday's game and of course England and Cook.
All four should be banned from any games involving top six teams. that is to say banned from the Premier league basically.
edit. looked it up and yes he was. of course he was. along with Burt, his assistant for yesterday's game and of course England and Cook.
All four should be banned from any games involving top six teams. that is to say banned from the Premier league basically.
They apparently get paid 15K oversee UAE matches. That is a conflict of interest 100%
It absolutely is when you ask why Premier League referees are sought after. What could they possibly bring to the league that is worth that much money?
What's the source on that?
Because if it's true, it's fecking outrageous. Stay on the Oil Boys good side, ref a dozen or so games over there every season for a few seasons and your retirement is set.
They’re not worth it. It’s just their new masters throwing money around which is unlimited. But now you could easily say these refs are in their pocket even if it’s subconsciously. The media and coaches and the league needs to address this for all of us.
There is also the unwritten rule not to give a yellow or red too early because it will "ruin" the game.
That nonsense led to Stoke, Chelsea and United kicking us all over the pitch in the first quarter of a game with no repercussions. If referees had given out the cards they were supposed to, that would have been stopped.
A card is a card regardless of when it happens.
Michael Oliver is also the same referee who once gave Gabriel Martinelli two yellows for two offenses within a single five second passage of play (one for getting in the way of a throw in, then another for a foul on the player who received the throw in). If he's going to pull shit like that, then there is no excuse for giving the smallest break to Kovacic on the second yellow.
Even if they have no reason to believe Oliver is actually corrupt the conflict of interest should rule him out. It’s outrageous that he referees top games being so compromised for at least two serious reasons.
If they implying he has a bias against Liverpool then he basically shouldn’t referee any game involving them or their rivals. It’s an absolute mess
If they implying he has a bias against Liverpool then he basically shouldn’t referee any game involving them or their rivals. It’s an absolute mess
The absolute conflict of interest of him refereeing in the UAE and then being in charge of a City match is crazy.
And not forgetting he's a Newcastle fan too. It's absolutely mindblowing that it's allowed
I had forgotten that. How he can ref those games is crazy.
It’s amazing how the UAE point has largely been kept out of discussion in the media. Imagine a 60/40 decision against City - at that moment the thought crosses Michael Oliver’s mind that going against City might jeopardise his £15k match day fees from UAE in future so he rules in favour of City. Or similarly when refereeing one of City’s rivals. It’s a clear potential conflict of interest. So how has it been allowed to continue and why has it not been raised to the front of the refereeing debate since it became apparent after the Spurs Liverpool issue?
Webb has lost his dressing room.
Years later a bombshell will drop how City and Newcastle have been influencing officials with random pay days in Middle East leagues, practically bribing them in plain sight. And wouldn't be the first time a Pep led club has been involved in shady officiating stuff. Perhaps more blatant than Barcelona's scandal.
Wonder which officials Qatar will target if they take control of United?
Wonder which officials Qatar will target if they take control of United?
Any ref who gives a bad decision against United will be given stale food whenever they take a Qatar airways flight out of the country.
It's a horrible precedent to set. Basically get upset make a public statement and a Ref won't officiate your games.
We should try it with that cnut Oliver.
Still banging on about Diaz and Liverpool on Sky. They have Webb on Refs Mic'd up.
Really really doubt they'd still be going on about it nearly a week and half later if it was anyone else at the receiving end
Really really doubt they'd still be going on about it nearly a week and half later if it was anyone else at the receiving end
VAR audio from the Gusto red card has been released.
Absolutely fecking ridiculous. The ankle buckles, are you joking? Going into someone 3 inches off the ground from the side is better than head on because of the way human joints work?
Joke of a decision then and knowing the process now only makes it more so. Showing a fecking freeze frame to the ref off the jump and fixating on where the ball is AFTER Gusto has obviously won it is just absurd.
Seems an entirely reasonable red card call.
Kovacic should obviously have been sent off too, though.
I just watched the Gusto vs Kovacic comparison in full. They did full VAR audio/video footage for the Gusto incident and explained why it was the correct decision.
For Kovacic they showed the first yellow card challenge with no VAR audio/video at all and instead with Webb explaining what Oliver and VAR probably thought. Then for the second yellow incident they didn’t show any footage at all let alone VAR audio/video and again Webb gave his opinion on what he thought Oliver would have been thinking.
I’m sorry but that is seriously fecking suspect.
For Kovacic they showed the first yellow card challenge with no VAR audio/video at all and instead with Webb explaining what Oliver and VAR probably thought. Then for the second yellow incident they didn’t show any footage at all let alone VAR audio/video and again Webb gave his opinion on what he thought Oliver would have been thinking.
I’m sorry but that is seriously fecking suspect.
It's ridiculous. Kovacic's challenge is very obviously worse - he comes in from behind and is nowhere close to the ball, whereas Gusto wins the ball very obviously and his momentum carries him into the Villa player where he makes contact with the leg closer to the ground versus Kovacic. There is literally no basis for why the Gusto one should be a more severe punishment whatsoever.
I’m not sure why they didn’t show both clips and the audio on the first? Odd.
That said I don’t see much issues with the Gusto red based on Casemiro last season. @WeePat @TheMagicFoolBus
it does seem consistent with how they are applying the rules
They gave a red which is fine. The problem is that despite this apparently being a chance for transparency they decided for the opposite with the Kovacic challenges. A total cover up with no explanation as to why we were not allowed to see and hear the footage for either incident.
I think the Gusto questionable. I don’t have a big problem with the red as such. My only point of contention is that his boot bounces off the ball and into the Villa player’s ankle, which I feel like a bit unlucky for Gusto. Not that it matters now, he’s served his 3 match suspension and will be back next game.
My biggest gripe with all this, as @Pexbo @TheMagicFoolBus eloquently point out, is when they put the Gusto one side by side with the Kovacic one and we can see the process by which they are judged is completely different.
Well I don't think the Casemiro one should have been given either personally! I vaguely recall discussing this with you when it happened and for me this is the same category - an orange card but not worth upgrading because the VAR has arbitrarily decided to intervene.
The audio for the VAR is especially ridiculous in my opinion because the VAR says "my only issue is the ankle buckled" which is just an absurd standard - so catching someone higher on the calf is just fine because the ankle didn't bend?
I thought we were meant to judge the intent of challenges rather than the outcome - which is my personal interpretation of the spirit of the laws and part of the big issue I have with VAR. Clearing the ball and catching someone unluckily is far less of a red card than going studs up halfway up the opposition calf after the ball has been played, and Webb trying to square that is just nonsense. Referees protecting each other needs to be stamped out of the game - appoint independent VAR operators and fecking disguise their voices if need be.
Poch put it best when he said he trusts the car but not the driver when speaking about VAR. The extent to which it has been disastrously implemented is farcical.
Seems fun. Let me try one:
Still banging on about Gusto and Chelsea on Sky. They have Webb on Refs Mic'd up.
Really really doubt they'd still be going on about it nearly two and a half week later if it was anyone else at the recieving end.
Last edited:
Ive just seen that Gusto one on Refs Miked Up and its not a red in my opinion, his back foot is planted well before the contact and he gets the ball first then the players boot so there is not enough for a red there.
+1
Why not just be transparent if there's nothing to hide? To me either yellow or red is fine, as long as they manage to be consistent or at least being able to provide a sound reasoning from the refs in the VAR-room that make us able to understand why Gusto's tackle is a red and Kovacic's tackle is not.
Last edited:
They don't know what they are doing.
Now we want them to release games against Arsenal, Tottenham and Crystal Palace. 3 games we lost because of some crazy decisions against us. The question is why aren't they doing that? Why don't they want transparency?
Now we want them to release games against Arsenal, Tottenham and Crystal Palace. 3 games we lost because of some crazy decisions against us. The question is why aren't they doing that? Why don't they want transparency?
Curious what they mean with negative impact on game? For who? Is there a difference between teams? Referees job is to follow the rules. Not deciding if decision will negatively impact a team or game.
It’s obvious why. Because it’s an utter shambles. They were forced to address the Kovacic incident tonight and decided to go against the entire format of the show and not show any VAR audio/video footage. Why?
My guess is that if they released the footage for every match, everyone would soon realise that the people running this are woefully incapable of doing the job to any standard and they’d be taking so many of them off duty the following week that there would be nobody left to do the job.
The thing that really irks me is how much of a closed fraternity the referee circle is. Why are they only using referees to run VAR? Why aren’t they training up teams of dedicated VAR operators, it’s an entirely different task to being the man in the centre of the pitch and a completely different skill set.
I don't understand why Webb is saying "Oliver probably thought...". Are they not writing and explaining their reasoning for contentious decisions ? The game was 2 days ago 
This has been a huge issue at least since Clattenburg was the most high-profile ref. They don't see themselves as there to ensure the laws of the game are followed and applied fairly. They seem themselves as the orchestrators of a sporting spectacle.
It is better that people see this as incompetence than something else. We already have lot of people thinking this is something else. It doesn't help either to have referees going abroad to work in a countries that actually own teams in Premier League.
So we need those tapes released. We want to know how referees made those decisions in our games that all ended up with us losing games.
Which is crazy. Just follow the rules and don't think about consenquences. That is their job.
It’s so obvious that the referees that have been paid for UAE games have been compromised.
This is now their mates over here covering up for them.
This is now their mates over here covering up for them.
Yes I don’t trust anything to do with the officials either. I guess they’ve been consistent with the Casemiro, Gusto, Jones challenge so Kovacic is an outlier in that regard and oddly they didn’t even play the VAR conversation around it.
The issue is also this random intervention as you say. The Casemiro one was given a yellow but was deemed a clear and obvious error to upgrade to a red.
It would be refreshing for a ref to review something and actually stick to their decision rather than persistently be swayed.