VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion
- Thread starter Samid
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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.
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.
Followed by Talksport discussing it for an entire week, just like they did with the onana v wolves incident
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.
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.
Replay all our defeats
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.
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.
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.
Football is not the same. The moments in the game is gone its making the sport as a whole look worse.
I agree they’re underpaid. Although that isn’t a new problem.
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.
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.
But United are suffering the most.
Well apart from the new subjective offsides.
Michael Oliver does.
Very well said!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
i only ever charge it to 69.
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.
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.
We need to hear these referees when they are communicating. They don't deserve trust.
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.
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.
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.
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'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
70k for the refs is insane. I wouldn't put up with the abuse and scrutiny for that.
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.
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.
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.
My only criticism of Erik is he doesn't try to influence the referees. He is very much a believer in fair play and focusing on what his team can deliver, which is admirable, but when the officials are this incompetent and biased they need to be called out.
He’s tried but gets called Ten excuses Hag and everyone laughs at us.
it’s no good preaching to the media when those reacting to the media doesn’t give a feck
One thing that should also be noted is that they made this whole deal about var being away from the stadium to stop any influence, but they still act based on the game situation. If a goal is very early, late or a possible decider it's scrutinized even more than say a 3rd goal in a 3-0 win.