VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion

It does more so than the human error of before. There’s been plenty of times this season alone where I’ve said ‘that’s a good decision by var’ and think about how annoying it was before when we just had to eat a blatant error.
VAR is not perfect but it’s the better of two evils for me.

Strongly disagree.
 
I've never seen Maguire react like he did today with the referee, in fact I've never seen him that angry ever. Says a lot.

He was dead right. Second week in a row now he's been playing well and referees just decide to punish him for nothing.

Anybody would get pissed at that.
 
Because of what a corrupt little racket they are, I’m fully expecting PGMOL to come out on the offensive and change the narrative around this match and announce that United face further sanctions because of the skirmish and “failed to control our players” or some shit.
They can do Arsenal too. Including a red/ban for Havertz (and not for how badly he played).

Casemiro gets deported for that.

 
So many wrong calls without VAR. With these refs, and no VAR, players will try to cheat every single minute. Just look at the Havertz show today. Almost scored with a handball, grabbed Ugarte for his throat, dived for a penalty. All that was missing was a goal from offside.

I don't see why people would want VAR to be scrapped with these refs. It needs tweaks, but without it, it will be mayhem.
 
So many wrong calls without VAR. With these refs, and no VAR, players will try to cheat every single minute. Just look at the Havertz show today. Almost scored with a handball, grabbed Ugarte for his throat, dived for a penalty. All that was missing was a goal from offside.

I don't see why people would want VAR to be scrapped with these refs. It needs tweaks, but without it, it will be mayhem.
I think most supporters agree that the existing PL refs need to be scrapped. I personally could do without VAR but if we had capable refs and found a way to eliminate or at least reduce agenda-driven abuse by VAR, I’d be open to see how it works.

As others have pointed out here, using video replays won’t improve the game if the same incapable clowns are in charge of it. You can’t fix bad driving by giving the same driver a faster car.
 
This one felt good. Been blatantly shafted by refs all year and much of Ten Hag’s tenure. Glad the lads held strong and worked their tails off today. Deserved the win by a mile.
 
I think most supporters agree that the existing PL refs need to be scrapped. I personally could do without VAR but if we had capable refs and found a way to eliminate or at least reduce agenda-driven abuse by VAR, I’d be open to see how it works.

As others have pointed out here, using video replays won’t improve the game if the same incapable clowns are in charge of it. You can’t fix bad driving by giving the same driver a faster car.

You can make it safer by adding technology into it. Will they change all the referees? No.

At least give them the tools where they will minimise the damage they are doing. You can clearly see that they are heavily instructed as to how to approach certain situations, but their common sense is non-existent, and they dont seem to be using their brains whatsoever. All the referring seems robotic, without any decision making continuity or God forbid, dare I say it, with the referee feeling the pulse of the game, and allowing free flowing football.

This Andy Madley guy was caught on camera sneak peaking the big screen at the Emirates. I'm not sure if he was trying to get more info by watching the replay. Not sure if it's shown, to be honest. But even for a referee to be checking himself out, seems weird. Nothing worse when the referee decides to be the centre of attention, like that Michael Oliver cnut.
 
Two matches in a row and we have an official a yard away from a tackle and make the wrong decision…both big calls giving other teams great opportunities. It’s crazy, with a clear view of incidents they can’t get it right.
 
I totally disagree with the lack of VAR. The drama and unfairness of this game turned it into a classic. And at the end of the day, football is to be enjoyed, stressed over, worried about and get your heart racing. And that's what it did today. When the goals went in, when the penalty was given, when the sending off was handed out, emotions were at their absolute height, because there was no waiting for a revised decision. It was pure old school anger. I loved it all. Ref was shit, but that's just standard.
I completely agree! The spontaneous emotions are a big part of the entertainment value and, in my eyes, worth much more than going down to a micro-level to find mistakes.

I obviously didn't want United to win at kickoff but after the game it felt right. This game was like a movie, where the villain lost, against all odds.
 
I completely agree! The spontaneous emotions are a big part of the entertainment value and, in my eyes, worth much more than going down to a micro-level to find mistakes.

I obviously didn't want United to win at kickoff but after the game it felt right. This game was like a movie, where the villain lost, against all odds.

Hahaha you know it was bad when even a Liverpool fan ended wanting us to win :lol:
 
I would LOVE to hear his explanation for not awarding Bruno a free kick when he got pole axed from behind on the edge of the Arsenal box.

We can laugh now, but at the time it's a terrible sign for the game ahead. It's just a blatantly dishonest call and when games are nip tuck you could do without it.
 
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Presumably the "assistant" referees and the fourth official are supposed to help the referees by signalling things the referee hasn't seen. It has always seemed strange to me that the assistant on one side of the field is supposed to see fouls at the far side of the pitch and incidents that may be shielded by the player's body. (e.g. hand ball) Why don't we have four assistants - two on each side of the pitch.
I suppose the difficulty of having two assistants disagree on a call might be embarrassing to the officials but their performance is frequently embarrassing anyway!
 
Presumably the "assistant" referees and the fourth official are supposed to help the referees by signalling things the referee hasn't seen. It has always seemed strange to me that the assistant on one side of the field is supposed to see fouls at the far side of the pitch and incidents that may be shielded by the player's body. (e.g. hand ball) Why don't we have four assistants - two on each side of the pitch.
I suppose the difficulty of having two assistants disagree on a call might be embarrassing to the officials but their performance is frequently embarrassing anyway!
The problem was the ref had a very clear view on most of the situations and still made those calls. So even with extra assistants would he let them overrule his decision? It was just bad reffing
 
Some refs are incompetent and rules aren't consistently applied, which needs to be looked in to.

But I absolutely hate the conspiracy nonsense where people imply refs are corrupt and purposely rule against us. How can you even watch and enjoy football if you think there's some big conspiracy against the club you support
 
Some refs are incompetent and rules aren't consistently applied, which needs to be looked in to.

But I absolutely hate the conspiracy nonsense where people imply refs are corrupt and purposely rule against us. How can you even watch and enjoy football if you think there's some big conspiracy against the club you support
I don't disagree with you, but you can't look at stuff like the Michael Oliver stats and not see some bias.

Now I don't believe they're out to get us, but to get headlines. Making big decisions, getting into the spotlight, boosting their reputation. All stuff you don't want from a ref, but what they're apparently after. Combine this with pressure from a home crowd, and you can get some one-sided performances. They officiate the narrative, not the game.
 
I don't disagree with you, but you can't look at stuff like the Michael Oliver stats and not see some bias.

Now I don't believe they're out to get us, but to get headlines. Making big decisions, getting into the spotlight, boosting their reputation. All stuff you don't want from a ref, but what they're apparently after. Combine this with pressure from a home crowd, and you can get some one-sided performances. They officiate the narrative, not the game.
Also media influence in that, if you make a mistake and it favours United, you are heavily criticised by pundits and media, it feeds the "refs are in Uniteds pocket" bullshit narrative. But if you make a mistake and it goes against United there is barely a mention of it.
 
Even if you ignore all the refereeing stuff it was so refreshing to watch a game where the linesman’s flag is final. A breath of fresh air. And offside is the one and only thing VAR gets consistently right. If removing the only thing it is really good at makes a game so much better as a spectacle that brings it home how the whole VAR farce is utterly pointless.
 
Even if you ignore all the refereeing stuff it was so refreshing to watch a game where the linesman’s flag is final. A breath of fresh air. And offside is the one and only thing VAR gets consistently right. If removing the only thing it is really good at makes a game so much better as a spectacle that brings it home how the whole VAR farce is utterly pointless.
VAR would have ratified that penalty and boiled out blood further.
 
Even if you ignore all the refereeing stuff it was so refreshing to watch a game where the linesman’s flag is final. A breath of fresh air. And offside is the one and only thing VAR gets consistently right. If removing the only thing it is really good at makes a game so much better as a spectacle that brings it home how the whole VAR farce is utterly pointless.
Additionally I miss players like Inzaghi. They added to the game overall (even if you never liked to see it from the opposition).
 
The problem of VAR, as much as there is one, is insoluble. Its main issue is that the interpreters of its decisions are heavily biased, heavily invested. This bias is what makes them fans in the first place. Watching football involves such strong emotions that it produces a severe cognitive regress, even among the brighter specimen on these boards. People start proclaiming apodictic certainty of any instance where their beloved team has been on the wrong side of the decision, even when events in question are not only, in any way shape or form certain, but actually extremely dubious (which is the case very often).

From this there is no remedy. Fans will continue to be fans for as long as there will be football. On the bright side of things, once a certain amount of time passes even the strongest opponents will start to realise they can't be reactionary about this, no more than they can be about replacing electric light with candles. Once the generations of the staunchest detractors die out, and people become accustomed, I suspect the idea of going back will become both inconceivable and laughable in equal measure.
 
Not sure why people have such a hard on for VAR to be removed. The fundamental flaws are a result of the governing body and the people operating it, rather than VAR itself. We were inches away from being fecked over by a dodgy penalty decision and Havertz handballing before fluffing his shot. By all means, maybe VAR wouldn’t have overturned the penalty, in the long run i think it’s more likely it would’ve.
 
There is no problem with VAR if it used properly, in the spirit of the game. Which is not how it has been setup. You can't have a sport where only 1% of decisions get slow motion and multiple angles. It's a farce, and fundamentally flawed. Football refereeing is subjective, by definition.

The best way to use VAR, imo, is to have limited challenges for each team, which require the onfield ref to watch the incident again, but only in real-time. Then at least you have the same human seeing broadly the same thing.

The other big issue now is that referees are natually going to err in one direction and let VAR correct it. But then not overturn things because the bar isn't high-enough. It's insanity, it really is.
 
The problem of VAR, as much as there is one, is insoluble. Its main issue is that the interpreters of its decisions are heavily biased, heavily invested. This bias is what makes them fans in the first place. Watching football involves such strong emotions that it produces a severe cognitive regress, even among the brighter specimen on these boards. People start proclaiming apodictic certainty of any instance where their beloved team has been on the wrong side of the decision, even when events in question are not only, in any way shape or form certain, but actually extremely dubious (which is the case very often).

From this there is no remedy. Fans will continue to be fans for as long as there will be football. On the bright side of things, once a certain amount of time passes even the strongest opponents will start to realise they can't be reactionary about this, no more than they can be about replacing electric light with candles. Once the generations of the staunchest detractors die out, and people become accustomed, I suspect the idea of going back will become both inconceivable and laughable in equal measure.

I don’t see how it’s insoluble. It’s essentially a governing problem rather than anything else. They’ve made it easy to hide behind an arbitrary threshold which allows them to be selective about when to get involved and when to stay away as it suits them. The only way to use VAR is in co-operation with the referee on the pitch, as an extra assistant instead of being considered as a quality control. On the contrary, i think it’s quite easy to improve VAR and make it a lot less flawless.

At the end of the day, the sport is essentially governed by morons and this is what we get. Their attempts at coming up with a solution for handball is so incredible daft it’s no wonder they’re failing at every other aspect. The flow chart for handballs must be a funny one. Oh you accidentally handballed and scored, well that’s not ok. Ah, you accidentally handballed and instantly passed it to a teammate who then scored a tap-in, well that makes it ok again. You accidentally handballed and scored by yourself 30 seconds later, well that’s sort of ok but still not ok, but we’ll leave that up to the referees to see if the handball happened so far back in time that it didn’t really matter. Ah, you’re a defender and you handballed inside your own box, well than we’ll take a shitload of imaginary things into account to decide if it was a punishable offense or not, and every so often we’ll bring in proximity and time to react as a decider.

1- remove the arbritrary threshold of clear and obvious
2- outsource VAR and introduce specific training courses to avoid a group of friends watching out for each other, which Dean has already admitted to
 
You keep blaming VAR. Are you blaming use of technology or the quality of the refs?

I’m not assigning blame. That’s what people who want to defend VAR keep doing. I don’t think it should ever have been introduced. It’s made football fundamentally worse as a spectacle. It does this in many different ways with many different factors at play but it’s all down to the use of VAR being incompatible with football as entertainment.
 
Some refs are incompetent and rules aren't consistently applied, which needs to be looked in to.

But I absolutely hate the conspiracy nonsense where people imply refs are corrupt and purposely rule against us. How can you even watch and enjoy football if you think there's some big conspiracy against the club you support

Well yeah the conspiracy talk is bollox especially as there's fans of every team spouting that stuff.

Madley was bad, weak and influenced by the home crowd which unfortunately is nothing new.
 
I strongly disagree.

You'd like to think that VAR would have overturned the penalty. But would they? Despite everyone agreeing that it wasn't a penalty, there was some contact so they'd have likely hid behind the referee's call. We've seen it countless times this season.

VAR also wouldn't have got involved in the huge number of bad calls the ref made throughout the match. Or the decidely uneven way in which yellow cards were issued.

The only real difference, had VAR been there, was that Ugarte might have been sent off in the melee after the penalty was awarded. It would have been another ridiculous call of course, but he was ever so slightly more aggressive than Havertz(?) who threw himself to the ground. Just imagine giving Oliver the chance to sit in his office and decide another of our games.

VAR has made one thing blindingly clear: The only thing worse than relying upon one referee to make all the decisions, is to rely on more than one. With slow-motion cameras.

Yeah I'm not entirely convinced that VAR overrules the penalty decision - and that alone show's how shit VAR is.

Like I like to say... VAR just gives different decisions, not necceserily correct ones.
 
Well yeah the conspiracy talk is bollox especially as there's fans of every team spouting that stuff.

Madley was bad, weak and influenced by the home crowd which unfortunately is nothing new.

Just to add to this. It’s obviously no coincidence that the tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff has gone through the roof since VAR was introduced. The technology that was supposed to appease fans that feel the referees are out to get their team has ended up radicalising these fans even further. It’s had the exact opposite effect to what was intended.
 
Well yeah the conspiracy talk is bollox especially as there's fans of every team spouting that stuff.

Madley was bad, weak and influenced by the home crowd which unfortunately is nothing new.
If you are that easily influenced that you end up blowing for everything for the away side, dishing out cards for them and then can’t apply it even close to evenly for the home side then you have no right to be a professional referee.
 
I must admit I almost turned off the TV after Dalot got sent off because of the disgusting refereeing
It felt like watching a movie where you knew the scenario in advance
Thankfully football still allows for these unexpected results
 
Yeah I'm not entirely convinced that VAR overrules the penalty decision - and that alone show's how shit VAR is.

Like I like to say... VAR just gives different decisions, not necceserily correct ones.
I mean they gave the West Ham one so what can we do. Although that could be attributed to Michael Oliver's -ridiculous- personal crusade against Manchester United football club
 
I don’t see how it’s insoluble. It’s essentially a governing problem rather than anything else. They’ve made it easy to hide behind an arbitrary threshold which allows them to be selective about when to get involved and when to stay away as it suits them. The only way to use VAR is in co-operation with the referee on the pitch, as an extra assistant instead of being considered as a quality control. On the contrary, i think it’s quite easy to improve VAR and make it a lot less flawless.

At the end of the day, the sport is essentially governed by morons and this is what we get. Their attempts at coming up with a solution for handball is so incredible daft it’s no wonder they’re failing at every other aspect. The flow chart for handballs must be a funny one. Oh you accidentally handballed and scored, well that’s not ok. Ah, you accidentally handballed and instantly passed it to a teammate who then scored a tap-in, well that makes it ok again. You accidentally handballed and scored by yourself 30 seconds later, well that’s sort of ok but still not ok, but we’ll leave that up to the referees to see if the handball happened so far back in time that it didn’t really matter. Ah, you’re a defender and you handballed inside your own box, well than we’ll take a shitload of imaginary things into account to decide if it was a punishable offense or not, and every so often we’ll bring in proximity and time to react as a decider.

1- remove the arbritrary threshold of clear and obvious
2- outsource VAR and introduce specific training courses to avoid a group of friends watching out for each other, which Dean has already admitted to
I think you've mistaken me for someone who is trying to solve your problem, but I have outlined a different problem altogether. Fans being wantonly biased is what's insoluble. This is what makes them bad interpreters. Any dispute over interpretation (which is what this thread is, at least on the best of days) is marred with this issue. You can improve refereeing but this won't disappear. To that there is no remedy.

I don't think VAR is a problem. I have argued for it long before it was introduced.
 
VAR is a good thing - the problem is the referees using VAR. I am sorry - but I can't see why anyone would be opposed to referees getting a better view of what really happens in a situation. But I still feel the penalty yesterday would have stood with VAR - not because it wasn't wrong...because it was. But simply because there was some kind of minimal contact and then tthey never overturn it
 
I’m not assigning blame. That’s what people who want to defend VAR keep doing. I don’t think it should ever have been introduced. It’s made football fundamentally worse as a spectacle. It does this in many different ways with many different factors at play but it’s all down to the use of VAR being incompatible with football as entertainment.

When I see old games before VAR - and I see so many incorrect goals - and stupid decisions from referees....I just get shocked

Like the goal we scored (against Chelsea ?) when we had that ingenious corner-move....which was so smart that everyone missed it.
Like the 2-2 game against Arsenal when Nistelrooy at least scored once - and both Arsenal-goals were offside by a mile
That shocking Chelsea-goal against us which was 1 meter offside
Roy Carrolls mistake against Spurs (even if it was funny)
Or Henry's handball against Ireland


Stuff like this - is for me the best reason why VAR needs to stay
 
VAR is a good thing - the problem is the referees using VAR. I am sorry - but I can't see why anyone would be opposed to referees getting a better view of what really happens in a situation. But I still feel the penalty yesterday would have stood with VAR - not because it wasn't wrong...because it was. But simply because there was some kind of minimal contact and then tthey never overturn it

A few seasons ago, or perhaps even more, they were instructed to focus on situations with contact where the contact was initiated by the attacker. Havertz lost control of the ball, started going down and then kicked out to initiate contact with Maguire. Obviously you can’t ignore the likelyhood of an absolute incompetent tit as VAR, but the most likely outcome is that it would’ve been overturned. I also think it would’ve prevented the skirmish that followed, where we are quite lucky that Ugarte didn’t get a yellow card, surprised he didn’t.