VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion

I hope the club decide to go nuclear over the decision today. If for nothing else, to give me something to elicit an emotional response.
 
The incompetence is quite staggering. You have to wonder when it will reach a tipping point. I don’t understand how the clubs haven’t come together and demand that the communication between refs be broadcast for these decisions.
 
When you slow it down you could say it's a foul in the Utd game. That's the problem.

You see similar about 10 times+ every game in the box. Holding, minimal contact etc

If VAR asks ref to review all of them, could see double-digit amount of pens every match...

VAR doesn't work with the vague way the laws of the game are enforced. You can't digitise that. So you get nonsense like today.

Refereeing needs to fundamentally change to enforce the letter of the law, or you scrap var.
 
Just seen the decision. Absolutely farcical. Oliver should be sacked with immediate effect and stoned by the United fans at once. And that's not based on today's decision alone. Corrupt little weasel.
 
KirkDuyt said:
If Oliver had given the oen right away, I get why VAR wouldnt overturn it. But to call him over for this as VAR is ridiculous.

If you watch it in slow motion 125 times, sure there's contact, but meeeeeh. Lame.
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With him it’s just weird what he gives against us. The peno to City last season was the weakest we saw all season (and was then never enforced elsewhere), this one is just so bland, there’ll need to be like 2-3 penos a game.
 
El Zoido said:
I genuinely think he’s (Oliver) biased against us, whether consciously or not. There’s a clear pattern of his dodgy decisions against us that doesn’t align the same with any other team. He’s also just a crap ref in general, as bad in the VAR box as he is on the grass.
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Hes also got a bias for helping City. Remember Joe Hart going head to head with him, gave nothing. The Doku karate kick against Liverpool. Not enough for a pen. Maybe a stretch to think he gives our local rivals an advantage because of us but he has so many occurrences of bad refereeing that something has to be done about him. He's the worst ref since Mike Dean for this type of thing. He wants himself in the headlines rather than the game
 
VAR proves that refs alone cannot be the ones making a decision because they have no understanding of football's dynamics and collision. Any contact can be deemed as a foul by these clowns without taking account of who is moving from which point to which point.
On top of that, referees are pressure to always follow VAR's recommendations, there's basically no chance of the pitch ref to have his own independent thought on the incident
 
KiD MoYeS said:
I hope the club decide to go nuclear over the decision today. If for nothing else, to give me something to elicit an emotional response.
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This is something that every club should start doing. Why sit back and allow this level of referring on a consistent basis. It's getting out of hand now. There is over double the amount of controversy with VAR than without it. It needs to go. Let human error be human error and let the game be how it used to be.
 
Mb194dc said:
When you slow it down you could say it's a foul in the Utd game. That's the problem.

You see similar about 10 times+ every game in the box. Holding, minimal contact etc

If VAR asks ref to review all of them, could see double-digit amount of pens every match...

VAR doesn't work with the vague way the laws of the game are enforced. You can't digitise that. So you get nonsense like today.

Refereeing needs to fundamentally change to enforce the letter of the law, or you scrap var.
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This is my problem with it. The line for which incidents come under scrutiny is so subjective that you inevitably invite unfavourable comparisons. That’s why we’re better off scrapping var altogether, because at least then the playing field is levelled again and we’re all playing with the same deck.

As it stands, it’s an absolute lottery and the enemy of consistency, the thing they’re trying to achieve.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Apart from anything else today just confirmed that the whole pitch side monitor thing is a total charade. As soon as the ref gets called over we know the outcome already. So it really needs to be done away with completely. Such a waste of everyone’s time.
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Not strictly true, referees have stuck with their decision when presented with the evidence and that’s their prerogative even if it’s rare.

That said, Laurie Whitwell pointed out a very important dynamic - Michael Oliver is mind bogglingly regarded as the most senior referee in the country and there was no chance David Coote was going to overrule him after Oliver called him to the monitor and spent over a minute showing him the footage to convince him.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Apart from anything else today just confirmed that the whole pitch side monitor thing is a total charade. As soon as the ref gets called over we know the outcome already. So it really needs to be done away with completely. Such a waste of everyone’s time.
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Well, when the ref is shown the same selective 2 second clip on repeat for 5 mins he's going to see something to give a foul for. Should be a minimum timeframe, maybe 10-15 seconds at full speed from different angles. None of this slowed down 2 frames nonsense, the VAR can very easily influence the on field ref by deliberately showing only a tiny piece of the action, which we saw today and with Casemiro last season and in many other instances.

It's an absolute charade and is becoming a blight on the game now, more to do with how it's being used rather than it's actual existence. Referees on commentary, referees as pundits, referees all over the place. And the guys in the VAR room are in a position where they can influence the outcome of games more than ever before with poor officiating. This just creates more exposure and jobs for the old boys on TV. Why would they want it to change when they're now getting paid to discuss how badly it's being utilised?

At least when the ref makes a wrong call, you have to accept he had one chance to view it. But now, multiple angles, slow motion replays etc. It still makes these shit calls, it had the potential to fix game changing errors, but it's operation is creating more bullshit that never existed before. Games without it are much more enjoyable.
 
Pexbo said:
Not strictly true, referees have stuck with their decision when presented with the evidence and that’s their prerogative even if it’s rare.

That said, Laurie Whitwell pointed out a very important dynamic - Michael Oliver is mind bogglingly regarded as the most senior referee in the country and there was no chance David Coote was going to overrule him after Oliver called him to the monitor and spent over a minute showing him the footage to convince him.
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I’d love to know the exact stats on that. I’d be fairly confident it’s so rare that it’s essentially irrelevant. I remember seeing it happen once, personally. Out of dozens of times I’ve seen these referrals since VAR was introduced.
 
Oranges038 said:
Well, when the ref is shown the same selective 2 second clip on repeat for 5 mins he's going to see something to give a foul for. Should be a minimum timeframe, maybe 10-15 seconds at full speed from different angles. None of this slowed down 2 frames nonsense, the VAR can very easily influence the on field ref by deliberately showing only a tiny piece of the action, which we saw today and with Casemiro last season and in many other instances.

It's an absolute charade and is becoming a blight on the game now, more to do with how it's being used rather than it's actual existence. Referees on commentary, referees as pundits, referees all over the place. And the guys in the VAR room are in a position where they can influence the outcome of games more than ever before with poor officiating. This just creates more exposure and jobs for the old boys on TV. Why would they want it to change when they're now getting paid to discuss how badly it's being utilised?

At least when the ref makes a wrong call, you have to accept he had one chance to view it. But now, multiple angles, slow motion replays etc. It still makes these shit calls, it had the potential to fix game changing errors, but it's operation is creating more bullshit that never existed before. Games without it are much more enjoyable.
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I’m like a broken record with this. But it was all utterly predictable. You just needed to watch football on telly. Pundits watching umpteen different replays of contentious calls and disagreeing on what the correct decision should be. Repeated on redcafe, with hours and hours to scrutinise and discuss every possible angle and we still couldn’t get a consensus. This happened almost every single weekend.

Why on earth did anyone think that stressed out match officials, either in a bunker or squinting at a pitch side monitor, would consistently come up with an outcome we would all agree with after a couple of minutes analysis?! That was always a pipe dream. Does my head in the way everyone was in denial about this. It couldn’t have been any more obvious this would fail yet here we are.
 
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Oranges038 said:
Well, when the ref is shown the same selective 2 second clip on repeat for 5 mins he's going to see something to give a foul for. Should be a minimum timeframe, maybe 10-15 seconds at full speed from different angles. None of this slowed down 2 frames nonsense, the VAR can very easily influence the on field ref by deliberately showing only a tiny piece of the action, which we saw today and with Casemiro last season and in many other instances.

It's an absolute charade and is becoming a blight on the game now, more to do with how it's being used rather than it's actual existence. Referees on commentary, referees as pundits, referees all over the place. And the guys in the VAR room are in a position where they can influence the outcome of games more than ever before with poor officiating. This just creates more exposure and jobs for the old boys on TV. Why would they want it to change when they're now getting paid to discuss how badly it's being utilised?

At least when the ref makes a wrong call, you have to accept he had one chance to view it. But now, multiple angles, slow motion replays etc. It still makes these shit calls, it had the potential to fix game changing errors, but it's operation is creating more bullshit that never existed before. Games without it are much more enjoyable.
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I've always said they should only see clips in real time and maybe a max of 3 times or something. If they cannot see something that goes against the decision on the field it is not clear and obvious.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
I hope the club decide to go nuclear over the decision today. If for nothing else, to give me something to elicit an emotional response.
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What club should do is demand investigation. Simple. We want to see and hear discusions from every game that involved us last couple of years. At the same time ban media from Old Trafford until further notice until we get fair coverage. We need our club leaders to be more involved in this issue.

Apologies don't help. We have lost potentially 10+ points already this year because of some wierd calls that had big impact on games. No matter how good or bad we are.

We need that referees have cam and mic on every second of the game so supporters can hear. That there is cam and mic in VAR-room every second of the game so supporters can hear.
 
The referee knew it was not a penalty, but he was unwilling to go against the senior referee sitting in VAR.

If that does not tell you where we are at with the state of referees in the Premier League then nothing will.

Absolutely gutless.

Considering TAA stamp on Sancho's foot last week and Michael Oliver in VAR decided there was nothing to see just makes this more galling.

United need to go hard on this and kick up a almighty fuss.
 
There needs to start being independent investigations or sackings for decisions where a VAR official invents something that never happened.

I think it's the only way it will stop. And it would stop, immediately, if there were actual consequences, because it's actually very easy to not do anything when there is absolutely no need to.

I can understand contentious decisions or ones where maybe fans or players don't agree with the interpretation, or even daft stuff where the rule or threshold for breaching it is made vague, but we constantly get decisions in games where none of these arguments apply.

Feel like I've been making this same post every 2 weeks for 3 years now. It won't stop happening until the officials are actually accountable for doing their jobs with integrity and a level of basic competence.

If people were allowed to feck up as badly and frequently in my profession and be protected every time, it'd be full of incompetent, corrupt oafs. This is what you have with the pgmol. It's supposed to be a job for "professional" officials. So maybe try holding them to professional standards
 
duffer said:
The only thing in doubt is whether or not it was a "clear and obvious error" from the ref.

It was a soft pen but De Ligt missed the ball and kicked the West Ham player for sure.

I get why you lot are angry, it's an extra time penalty but shouts of "worst ever decision" are madness.
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I thought wumming wasn’t allowed?

Ings runs in from yards away, studs up until the last second and kicks at AND MISSES the ball, but carries on full pelt into de Ligt, then collapses as the the ball hits his hand/arm (twice?).

But you’ll ignore all that and selectively say de Ligt “kicked the West Ham player” for sure? A 50/50 challenge that happens dozens of times in every game around the country… in fact, given how far Ings runs in with studs showing until last second, I don’t even think it’s 50/50, but the replay shows them BOTH kicking towards the ball and missing. Both. It’s as much as Ings making contact as de Ligt.

It’s not a pen (as Coote initially decided having seen the incident). Oliver showed him one angle in slow-mo without the few seconds before it, then as “senior official”, Coote bottled it and went with Oliver.

So most rival fans, the major journalists at The Athletic, ex players (incl Shearer), ex refs and pundits all saying (1) it’s no foul and (2) VAR shouldn’t call ref over, but they’re all wrong? All these people involved with football in some shape or form, at the top of their profession, are all wrong?

 
If they’re going to insist on it continuing then there should be no communication between ref and VAR other than calling for a review. You can’t have somebody in their ear trying to convince them of a decision.
 
Pink Moon said:
As always, the 'clear and obvious error' criteria is causing more problems than it's worth with VAR. Essentially the 'clear and obvious' thing is saying that they'll only intervene if it's an absolute howler of a mistake from the referee rather than just intervening on any mistake as they should so now people lose their shit when VAR intervenes because they don't think it's enough of a mistake.

I say that because it's clearly a foul by de Ligt and if he'd gotten away with that and the reasoning was 'yeah, it's a mistake, but it's not the worst howler you'll ever see so we'll play on' then surely that would be an injustice, no? Wouldn't West Ham fans then be the ones complaining and going nuts over refereeing decisions?

If they'd scrap that 'clear and obvious' BS we'd have much less controversy around decisions like these imo.

edit: The lack of consistency is a killer though. TAA stamping on Sancho's foot last week was an obvious foul too and yet they played on. That's where fans rightly lose their shit.
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Clearly a foul? Absolutely not. Majority of pundits also agree it isn’t a foul, from what I’ve seen.
 
I personally still can’t get over the ridiculous pen that cnut gave against Hojlund in the derby last season. Pretty much unprecedented, and continually ignored elsewhere going forward from then. How are we supposed to accept that?
 
Pink Moon said:
As always, the 'clear and obvious error' criteria is causing more problems than it's worth with VAR. Essentially the 'clear and obvious' thing is saying that they'll only intervene if it's an absolute howler of a mistake from the referee rather than just intervening on any mistake as they should so now people lose their shit when VAR intervenes because they don't think it's enough of a mistake.

I say that because it's clearly a foul by de Ligt and if he'd gotten away with that and the reasoning was 'yeah, it's a mistake, but it's not the worst howler you'll ever see so we'll play on' then surely that would be an injustice, no? Wouldn't West Ham fans then be the ones complaining and going nuts over refereeing decisions?

If they'd scrap that 'clear and obvious' BS we'd have much less controversy around decisions like these imo.

edit: The lack of consistency is a killer though. TAA stamping on Sancho's foot last week was an obvious foul too and yet they played on. That's where fans rightly lose their shit.
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Do me a favour. It’s never ever a foul. The ref even thought it in real time.

If that had been given I’d have been fuming but it wouldn’t be looked at again by VAR and it chalk up to an atrocious decision. The fact it was referred for a further look is even more of a disgrace. Coote bottled it as it was Oliver, a more senior ref, on VAR and he didn’t want to go against him. A truly incredible decision and anyone who says it’s even remotely a foul is having a laugh.
 
One of the many reasons I miss Klopp on our team was his reactions to insane calls like this. I do worry about what Slot would do in these situations. Klopp would bully the refs into leaving us alone for 5 matches.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m like a broken record with this. But it was all utterly predictable. You just needed to watch football on telly. Pundits watching umpteen different replays of contentious calls and disagreeing on what the correct decision should be. Repeated on redcafe, with hours and hours to scrutinise and discuss every possible angle and we still couldn’t get a consensus. This happened almost every single weekend.

Why on earth did anyone think that stressed out match officials, either in a bunker or squinting at a pitch side monitor, would consistently come up with an outcome we would all agree with after a couple of minutes analysis?! That was always a pipe dream. Does my head in the way everyone was in denial about this. It couldn’t have been any more obvious this would fail yet here we are.
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Yeah, when you have a long history of disagreements over almost every contentious decision ever made. Expecting 3 guys with a video to come to the right decision in a limited time frame, doesn't seem like the greatest idea.

I'd be all for scrapping it, but I still think that it's how it is being used by the officials rather than it's existence that is the biggest problem.

Decisions like today are boggling, especially since Michael Oliver last weekend didn't think the TAA tackle on Sancho was worthy of sending the match referee to the monitor.
 
Pink Moon said:
As always, the 'clear and obvious error' criteria is causing more problems than it's worth with VAR. Essentially the 'clear and obvious' thing is saying that they'll only intervene if it's an absolute howler of a mistake from the referee rather than just intervening on any mistake as they should so now people lose their shit when VAR intervenes because they don't think it's enough of a mistake.

I say that because it's clearly a foul by de Ligt and if he'd gotten away with that and the reasoning was 'yeah, it's a mistake, but it's not the worst howler you'll ever see so we'll play on' then surely that would be an injustice, no? Wouldn't West Ham fans then be the ones complaining and going nuts over refereeing decisions?

If they'd scrap that 'clear and obvious' BS we'd have much less controversy around decisions like these imo.

edit: The lack of consistency is a killer though. TAA stamping on Sancho's foot last week was an obvious foul too and yet they played on. That's where fans rightly lose their shit.
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As far as I recall, Michael Oliver was the VAR official for that game.

He should be called out for his bullshit decisions.
 
Pink Moon said:
As always, the 'clear and obvious error' criteria is causing more problems than it's worth with VAR. Essentially the 'clear and obvious' thing is saying that they'll only intervene if it's an absolute howler of a mistake from the referee rather than just intervening on any mistake as they should so now people lose their shit when VAR intervenes because they don't think it's enough of a mistake.

I say that because it's clearly a foul by de Ligt and if he'd gotten away with that and the reasoning was 'yeah, it's a mistake, but it's not the worst howler you'll ever see so we'll play on' then surely that would be an injustice, no? Wouldn't West Ham fans then be the ones complaining and going nuts over refereeing decisions?

If they'd scrap that 'clear and obvious' BS we'd have much less controversy around decisions like these imo.

edit: The lack of consistency is a killer though. TAA stamping on Sancho's foot last week was an obvious foul too and yet they played on. That's where fans rightly lose their shit.
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I don't think it's clearly a foul. Ings comes in with his leg out but pulls it back because of how Kilman is going on, then it's pretty much a coming together where they all miss the ball and De Ligt connects with Ings. If Ings won the ball and De Ligt takes him out then yes, not so much when Ings mistimes it and just jumps into the situation.

As far as clear and obvious, yes. All we can do is compare it with the threshold. Coote sees the situation, he instantly wave it away so he doesn't think there's enough in it, which i think is fair considering the overall situation. It's one of those: If the ref awards a penalty then VAR won't overturn it, but he shouldn't get involved either if he doesn't award it. Instead, Michael Oliver decides it's a clear and obvious fault and the referee should be sent to the screen.

Point is, with VAR in use the consistency of the refereeing is expected to be better. It is a bit funny that you have Michael Oliver waving away Doku planting his studs in Mc Allisters chest, only for the same Michael Oliver to determine that the De Ligt - Ings situation is a clear and obvious fault where the referee should go to the screen. Where's the consistency. It's also the same Michael Oliver that awarded Manchester City a soft as feck penalty against us, for an incident never again to be awarded as a pen. Now, without VAR you'd just argue that it's always going to differ based on where the referee is standing, his view of the situation, but with VAR in place you'd expect the referees to consistently apply those rules. So the De Ligt - Ings situation is considered a clear and obvious error, then what about Sancho in his most recent match against Liverpool. There should be a lot more comparisons over the line, rather than talking about them as individual situations, in order to point out the big differences in how the rules are being applied. If they want to lower or increase the bar for awarding penalties, then by all means, but you still expect it to be applied consistently
 
Just like every employee. If you make crucial mistakes then you should be punished or there must be consequences so next time you will be more careful in doing your job and making the decision. No punishment then they will keep doing the same mistakes again and again.
 
You have to laugh or you’ll cry. Could be completely innocent but it’s just a bad look to be doing that while in the VAR room. Would love to see who is in his team.
 
Even if we know this was never a penalty in a million years, more to the point is why does VAR re referee some decisions but not others? The inconsistency with its usage is so poor.

Hilariously, it also shows that Michael Oliver, supposedly one of the leading referees in this country, believes that incident equals a penalty.
 
acnumber9 said:
If they’re going to insist on it continuing then there should be no communication between ref and VAR other than calling for a review. You can’t have somebody in their ear trying to convince them of a decision.
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I am a broken record in this but surely the application of VAR should be it’s a tool for the on pitch referee to use if he has doubt and/or would like a second opinion on a subjective judgement based call. That’s how they use it in rugby. He clearly had no doubt with his on field decision yesterday yet he has a so called senior official in his ear re refereeing the game from a TV booth.
 
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