VAR, Refs and Linesmen | General Discussion

city-puma said:
One of the obvious flaws the current way to run var is that only some angled views are sent to referee to examine pitch side. I guess two are the max. In this situation, they only sent one. Really poor and it’s like intentional manipulation.
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It’s so dumb. A ref squinting at a Tv screen showing only one angle, for a second or two, then making a decision. The whole point of video refereeing is to use as many angles as possible and make a decision based on the totality of evidence. Look at the way it’s used in rugby. That’s how you use video evidence.

Of course, rugby is a game with so many stoppages it suits video input on big decisions. Football doesn’t. So we’re left with this half arsed shambles. When the sport was much better off before it was introduced.
 
MikeKing said:
Well, obviously but if we fight back he'll be perceived as classless or whatever, somebody making excuses, trying to affect the refs, lacking focus and generally being made an example out of by the f.a. It's not like we only have to moan at the refs and suddenly we get favourable or fair decisions.
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I wouldn't say it is about moaning. It is only to show how we have been treated and give fact. He answer was great today. Just like that. He just need to point out that we are having different rules. That somehow are negative towards us a lot of times.
 
Giggsyking said:


From this angel
not a red
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Thought I'd never say it but when looking at it in real time it doesnt really look as a red card. Its 2 seconds and doesnt even seem harmful in any way. Hughes would probably had reacted more if it was too.

In slow motion everything looks dramatic. In this case 10 x more dramatic
 
I fear they gave the Ref a weird angle (not that he made any case for competence all game). Our team should be able to put together all the angles and context and make a decent appeal.
 
Jordan Ayew has Fred round the neck. No card??
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Eriksen out for the rest of the season. No card given for this?
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Martinez elbowed in the eye. No card given for this?
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How bad does this get before they will start investigating it and/or suspending referees?

The Casemiro red card is very suspicious on its own to me because there is no decision to make in the first place. They've just invented one and then fitted the rules around it, again. It's not a mistake it's literally using VAR to try and dictate the outcome of games by retrofitting the rules around the decision you've pre decided you want to make. No one watches that back and sees a red card unless they WANT to find a red card.

In the same game you have the ref completely inventing a foul against the team reduced to 10 men when they are through on goal.

You have him elbowing one of their players in the face to set up a counter attack for the opposition, and then attempting to play on and pretend he didn't notice (sorry but what the actual feck?)

Then you have him inventing 7 minutes of added time out of nothing.

In any other sport if the officials behaved like this they would be suspended and investigated. Imagine a boxing ref accidentally smacking one of the boxers in the side of the head mid round and then trying to pretend nothing happened, or deducting points from the same fighter for things that never happened. The fight would get called off.

It's honestly at a point where you have to be in denial or just completely fecking stupid not to think something is seriously up or needs sorting out.

I mean today was a complete and utter farce but it's hardly a one off. It's been a weekly event in the PL and FA Cup for well over a year now. Its not even the most farcical or suspicious of recent weeks, after the Liverpool game where they invented a way to not apply the offside rule to one team, then we were meant to believe that all the TV cameras at the same time mysteriously forgot to watch the game when a goal was inexplicably ruled out for offside for the other team.

I mean come on now. There's stuff you can explain away as mistakes, there's stuff that's explainable as gross incompetence (well until it keeps happening and no one does anything about it), and then there's just taking people for complete idiots.

There are only two possible explanations for why giving referees access to factual video technology would make them worse at their jobs. The first is that they're utterly incompetent and need to be sacked, and the second is that they're not incompetent and are getting things wrong on purpose, and at this point the first of those explanations is getting hard to find plausible as if that was the case someone would have noticed and sacked them by now.
 
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noodlehair said:
How bad does this get before they will start investigating it suspending referees?

The Casemiro red card is very suspicious on its own to me because there is no decision to make in the first place. They've just invented one and then fitted the rules around it, again. It's not a mistake it's literally using VAR to try and dictate the outcome of games by retrofitting the rules around the decision you've pre decided you want to make. No one watches that back and sees a red card unless they WANT to find a red card.

In the same game you have the ref completely inventing a foul against the team reduced to 10 men when they are through on goal.

You have him elbowing one of their players in the face to set up a counter attack for the opposition, and then attempting to play on and pretend he didn't notice (sorry but what the actual feck?)

Then you have him inventing 7 minutes of added time out of nothing.

In any other sport if the officials behaved like this they would be suspended and investigated. Imagine a boxing ref accidentally smacking one of the boxers in the side of the head mid round and then trying to pretend nothing happened, or deducting points from the same fighter for things that never happened. The fight would get called off.

It's honestly at a point where you have to be in denial or just completely fecking stupid not to think something is seriously up or needs sorting out.

I mean today was a complete and utter farce but it's hardly a one off. It's been a weekly event in the PL and FA Cup for well over a year now. Its not even the most farcical or suspicious of recent weeks, after the Liverpool game where they invented a way to not apply the offside rule to one team, then we were meant to believe that all the TV cameras at the same time mysteriously forgot to watch the game when a goal was inexplicably ruled out for offside for the other team.

I mean come on now. There's stuff you can explain away as mistakes, there's stuff that's explainable as gross incompetence (well until it keeps happening and no one does anything about it), and then there's just taking people for complete idiots.

There are only two possible explanations for why giving referees access to video technology would make then worse at their jobs. The first is that they're utterly incompetent and need to be sacked, and the second is that they're not incompetent and are getting things wrong on purpose, and at this point the first of those explanations is getting hard to find plausible as if that was the case someone would have noticed and sacked them by now.
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You're also forgetting how the same referee who was doing all that during the game didn't think that the handball where Hughes blatantly had his arm above his head wasn't a penalty, and which wouldn't have been a penalty had VAR not been forced to give it through sheer embarrassment at not giving such a blatant decision.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s so dumb. A ref squinting at a Tv screen showing only one angle, for a second or two, then making a decision. The whole point of video refereeing is to use as many angles as possible and make a decision based on the totality of evidence. Look at the way it’s used in rugby. That’s how you use video evidence.

Of course, rugby is a game with so many stoppages it suits video input on big decisions. Football doesn’t. So we’re left with this half arsed shambles. When the sport was much better off before it was introduced.
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The ref invented 7 minutes of added time for the incident so had plenty of time to look at all the angles if he had wanted to. Intentional manipulation is exactly what it is and managers, players etc. really need to start calling it out for what it is as that's the only way it's going to stop.

It's nothing to do with the suitability of the technology. Video footage can't lie or re invent the rules to fit an agenda or narrative. Only the people using it can do that...and if they can afford to spend 4 minutes using an automated piece of technology to decide if a goal is offside, they can very easily find time to look at an incident from more than 1 angle. The problem is they don't want to because as we see time and time again, they referee to a narrative and to encourage the "drama of the premier league/Cup" as opposed to refereeing to apply the rules correctly.
 
Anustart89 said:
You're also forgetting how the same referee who was doing all that during the game didn't think that the handball where Hughes blatantly had his arm above his head wasn't a penalty, and which wouldn't have been a penalty had VAR not been forced to give it through sheer embarrassment at not giving such a blatant decision.
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Well yeah, but no matter how ridiculous it gets people just want to believe these are all coincidental mistakes and that it's all down to utterly inexplicable incompetence, which apparently no one can do anything about. Like, if you're in charge of the officiating, you for some unknown reason can't just hire people who aren't astonishingly useless at being referees, or replace people who repeatedly demonstrate they don't know how to do their job, with people who do.

In every other profession in the world, including many that are much more highly skilled and prone to error than refereeing a football game with the aid of video technology, you can do this, but apparently there's this completely unique situation with premier league referees where its impossible to ever replace or improve them, and that's not suspicious or weird at all, is it.

I mean it's not like there's some other major European league where it recently turned out the reason this was happening was because the refs were all corrupt and teams were picking which refs they wanted. It's also not like there's a recently retired Premier league ref whose name rhymes with flattenburg, who openly admitted he refereed games to his own agenda rather than to the rules, and gave direct examples including one game where him deliberately ignoring the rules could have cost a team the title. I obviously just imagined these things.
 
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What is the point in Var if both the Ref and the Var officials don't seem to communicate in an joined up way. Picking one instance out of that melee is just anti United. At least if you going to send someone off which is the reason you have asked the ref to look, you should show it happening in real time from all angle to let the ref be informed enough to make the right decision. Running a 2 sec on repeat infers his hands were there longer than they were and if the whole incident been ran to conclusion both were smiling after it and a half hug before walking away ( for violent conduct part). Finally if there is no independent questioning of Var from an official stance and to do so risks incurring a further penalty where is the checks and balances and fairness. If you are untouchable and never admit you get things wrong then your remorseless and have a fragile yet enormous ego. They rarely, if ever , admit they are wrong on review where if they did so it would build trust and integrity.
 
Had a look through some weekend game highlights.

This week, the on-field referees missed a blatant handball (VAR overruled and gave a pen), a ball blatantly over the line for Newcastle's goal (VAR overruled and chalked off the goal), a blatant penalty for Bournemouth (VAR didn't give anything) and made a sensible 2 yellows decision in a brawl (VAR overruled).

The Bournemouth mistake is typical of VAR since they started scaling it back - letting an on-field mistake slide for no good reason.
I'd say the Casemiro red is 50-50 - remembering the "slap" on VIdic that got Drogba sent off in the final, I don't think it was any worse than what Casemiro did, and if the ref did see those few seconds directly, I think he's giving the red. It's also a strange one because VAR overrules are so rare nowadays.

To sum up, in all 3 games, the on-field referees made big mistakes. VAR corrected a few but not all, and added a controversial (but by no means blatantly wrong) decision to this mix.

In this rush to crucify VAR, which has been increasingly hobbled by wanting to appease those who dislike it, it seems everyone has forgotten how fecking terrible on-field referees are. They miss half the game, what they do see, there is NO BASIS for most calls, they're blatantly called by gut feeling or match situation or not wanting to make a tough call.
No better example than the Sabitzer "foul" - a product of an on-field ref that didn't want the game to become an anti-climax. We'd go back to that vibes-based refereeing for every penalty and red card without VAR.
 
Make them give interviews post match. It would change everything. Arseholes are protected way too much. They keep on running everything intentionally because of drama without any consequences. Let them come after the match and explain their decisions. That would put a fear in them of getting exposed and it would take away their secret weapon of doing anything and getting away with everything.
 
Why EPL football so special than American Football, Baseball, NBA, or any other sports...etc. that there is no checks and balances with the referees, EPL, or their associations that just to appeal you risk having another ban.

Nobody can do anything to them, cant check on them, cant camplain anything about them without risking a ban or fine. They are the king and they can do whatever they want and we the mere peasants just have to accept it and cant do anything about it.

Think there should be some kind of action on social media to call out and change the system to check on the referees and their higher ups.

VAR should have the action with before and after just like we watch on TV. Shouldnt show a still picture with 1/2 seconds and let the ref judge the whole incidents base on that.
 
Few players could have had reds in the Utd Melee. Aggressively putting your hands on shirt collar, neck or in someone's face usually a red.

Plenty of refereeing crimes this season, not yesterday though.
 
Mb194dc said:
Few players could have had reds in the Utd Melee. Aggressively putting your hands on shirt collar, neck or in someone's face usually a red.

Plenty of refereeing crimes this season, not yesterday though.
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Yesterday? . It sounds like you only watched Friday's game. Because yesterday was full of refereering crimes.
 
Mb194dc said:
Few players could have had reds in the Utd Melee. Aggressively putting your hands on shirt collar, neck or in someone's face usually a red.

Plenty of refereeing crimes this season, not yesterday though.
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The fecking balls of a Chelsea fan to say this! It seemed you were involved in mass brawls every other week for a while and have neither side receive a red!
 
Ive given up on VAR and in general the shite level of officiating. The final nail for me was in last year's FA cup game against Boro, how in the feck was that not a handball for their goal? I don't give a feck anymore, we've been complaining for so long yet the officials don't do anything, they actually make it worse with the stupid rules.
 
berbatrick said:
Had a look through some weekend game highlights.

This week, the on-field referees missed a blatant handball (VAR overruled and gave a pen), a ball blatantly over the line for Newcastle's goal (VAR overruled and chalked off the goal), a blatant penalty for Bournemouth (VAR didn't give anything) and made a sensible 2 yellows decision in a brawl (VAR overruled).

The Bournemouth mistake is typical of VAR since they started scaling it back - letting an on-field mistake slide for no good reason.
I'd say the Casemiro red is 50-50 - remembering the "slap" on VIdic that got Drogba sent off in the final, I don't think it was any worse than what Casemiro did, and if the ref did see those few seconds directly, I think he's giving the red. It's also a strange one because VAR overrules are so rare nowadays.

To sum up, in all 3 games, the on-field referees made big mistakes. VAR corrected a few but not all, and added a controversial (but by no means blatantly wrong) decision to this mix.

In this rush to crucify VAR, which has been increasingly hobbled by wanting to appease those who dislike it, it seems everyone has forgotten how fecking terrible on-field referees are. They miss half the game, what they do see, there is NO BASIS for most calls, they're blatantly called by gut feeling or match situation or not wanting to make a tough call.
No better example than the Sabitzer "foul" - a product of an on-field ref that didn't want the game to become an anti-climax. We'd go back to that vibes-based refereeing for every penalty and red card without VAR.
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Have you ever tried being a referee? I have refereed underage football matches a few times. If more football fans did this you’d get a much more informed discussion here. Onfield referees makes mistakes because they’re human and because it’s a very difficult job. They don’t get replays. They often see incidents from difficult angles. Everything happens very quickly and they’re making decisions based on something that happened in a fraction of a second. And PL referees are doing this with footballer who have made cheating and deliberately deceiving them an art form.

It’s the inability of fans to accept this fact that has inflicted VAR on us..And we’re left feeling a far greater sense of injustice because it’s failing at its intended purpose of correcting these occasional, inevitable mistakes. And when decisions go against you that can’t be attributed to an honest mistake you’re bound to feel a hell of a lot more aggrieved.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
And PL referees are doing this with footballer who have made cheating and deliberately deceiving them an art form.
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It doesn't help their case when they've spent years helping those same footballers improve their cheating by actually not punishing them for obvious things even though the yellow cards for cheating were invented for years, and hardly any ref uses it. Just 12 yellows in entire last season and half of that was for Everton players. I am sure United player deserved at least 5.

Hard to feel sorry for them when you had the likes of Diego Costa spending years in England and getting away with cheating, tackling, elbowing and kicking people all over the pitch and getting just one(!!) red card(two yellows for Diego Costa in just one game in his time here) in their entire time year. Suarez and Mane who were one of the dirtiest players in the league in the last ten years or so never got a red card.

Refereeing seems like a really difficult thing to do, but with the introduction of VAR we just have another proof that how half of the referees simply don't know the rules, don't understand the game, and few of them want too make some games simply a spectacle for the fans more than a fair game for both sides.
 
Mb194dc said:
Few players could have had reds in the Utd Melee. Aggressively putting your hands on shirt collar, neck or in someone's face usually a red.

Plenty of refereeing crimes this season, not yesterday though.
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The singling out of one player in a melee where a ‘few could’ve seen red’, slowing down footage on a loop of one angle which seriously misrepresented the actual incident and made it look like something it wasn’t, ignoring the aggressive foul and behaviour of the player that led to the incident as well as ignoring other incidents of actual violent conduct that were worse than holding somebody’s shirt collar….Is fine
 
It's hard not to suspect that the incompetence of those using VAR is deliberate, that way the "VAR has ruined the game" shouts will get louder and it can be scrapped, taking away the threat of accountability to officials.
 
ROFLUTION said:
Thought I'd never say it but when looking at it in real time it doesnt really look as a red card. Its 2 seconds and doesnt even seem harmful in any way. Hughes would probably had reacted more if it was too.

In slow motion everything looks dramatic. In this case 10 x more dramatic
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Agree its slowed down to look like he's throttled him , and its far from it, another angle his hands are on his shirt. Appeal it and the FA will give him 4 games because they can, they never admit they get things wrong, if you use the law correctly in that mele all of them should have been sent off.
 
I think it's fairly clear that refs and VAR 100% take into account what would make a game more dramatic, or what decision here would make for the better story. I'm utterly convinced of that.

For example if that game yesterday plays out the same up until the 70th minute but this time Casemiro is only booked, it stays 11 vs 11 and its still 2-0 going into injury time no way does the game end up going into the 99th minute as it actually did. They'd have put up 3 or 4 minutes at most. But because its 2-1 and we've got ten men and its tense and dramatic we end up playing fecking 9 minutes of injury time.

It's very annoying.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Have you ever tried being a referee? I have refereed underage football matches a few times. If more football fans did this you’d get a much more informed discussion here. Onfield referees makes mistakes because they’re human and because it’s a very difficult job. They don’t get replays. They often see incidents from difficult angles. Everything happens very quickly and they’re making decisions based on something that happened in a fraction of a second. And PL referees are doing this with footballer who have made cheating and deliberately deceiving them an art form.

It’s the inability of fans to accept this fact that has inflicted VAR on us..And we’re left feeling a far greater sense of injustice because it’s failing at its intended purpose of correcting these occasional, inevitable mistakes. And when decisions go against you that can’t be attributed to an honest mistake you’re bound to feel a hell of a lot more aggrieved.
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I agree it's very difficult* and most mistakes are things they don't see clearly or at all. That's why they make up what happened, including in many match-changing cases. And I think because of that, especially as the game gets faster, that VAR is necessary.

On net the insane decisions are down. Happy with that. Even this weekend, with so much anger at VAR, that's clearly the case (Case?).

Agree that the use of 5 frames of super slo-mo from one angle is a bad way to judge. And it might be better to have a cricket-like system, where a team gets 2 appeals per game, instead of VAR ignoring blatant fouls or calling back for things nobody realizes or cares about.

It's funny that the thing VAR is best at is the one I don't care about -millimetre offsides-i don't believe the tech or pictures are good enough to make those calls, they need to add a margin of error to the lines.

*I did do this online offside spotting game, and it was impossible.
 
I'd rather have a referee make a genuine mistake, like the old days, than someone looking at TV monitors over and over again at slow motion video and still getting it wrong and only interfering when they feel like it..

Also get the feeling that referees are not so careful with their decisions because they know that someone could correct them if they get it wrong or even back them in their wrong decision.

Goal line technology - fine. Unless they can get the rest 100% correct, VAR is pointless and scrapping it would make the games much more exciting.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
I'd rather have a referee make a genuine mistake, like the old days, than someone looking at TV monitors over and over again at slow motion video and still getting it wrong and only interfering when they feel like it..

Also get the feeling that referees are not so careful with their decisions because they know that someone could correct them if they get it wrong or even back them in their wrong decision.

Goal line technology - fine. Unless they can get the rest 100% correct, VAR is pointless and scrapping it would make the games much more exciting.
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The main thing for me, that has been a big advocate for VAR, is that it hasn’t even done the most important thing which is eliminate thuggish behaviour on the pitch, and protecting players by deterring shithouse tackles. Instead they let Fabinho take out a young talent with a horrible tackle and let him get away with a yellow card due to the arbitrary bar set for intervening. Andy Carroll had one mission against us and that was to attempt to injure as many players as he possibly could. He sent Eriksen to the treatment room for two months and didn’t get properly punished until he made another two thuggish tackles, despite VAR being there watching it.
 
Paul the Wolf said:
I'd rather have a referee make a genuine mistake, like the old days, than someone looking at TV monitors over and over again at slow motion video and still getting it wrong and only interfering when they feel like it..

Also get the feeling that referees are not so careful with their decisions because they know that someone could correct them if they get it wrong or even back them in their wrong decision.

Goal line technology - fine. Unless they can get the rest 100% correct, VAR is pointless and scrapping it would make the games much more exciting.
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Agree with every word.

Referees will make mistakes, they're fallible like all of us. Much better to live with that than have these interminable delays and examinations with what are often subjective calls in any case. - and often plain wrong.

I hadn't considered it before, but I'm sure, as Paul the Wolf says, refs are indeed inclined not to make calls so that the VAR folks make the decision.

Changes which appear to be improvements often have unintended consequences, to my mind VAR is a case in point. Rugby and other sports where delays and re-starts are built in are perfect for careful video analysis. This causes unnatural delays in football. VAR has turned out to be a disappointment and, in my opinion, does not improve our game.
 
Who is this bald clown? Zero control on the game. These thugs will end up injuring our players.
 
Samid said:
Who is this bald clown? Zero control on the game. These thugs will end up injuring our players.
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Leeds taking him for a ride with time wasting. Know he has absolutely no control
 
Example for Leeds there of ref just relying on VAR to bail him out. VAR is a shambles with and against us
 
You'll can't be complaining today. Garnacho getting fk for zero contact. Martinez knows exactly what he's doing studs in the face of Bamford.
 
Surprised Martinez one wasn't reviewed tbh but guess you can't prove beyond doubt it was intentional with him falling down.

Him playing at Elland Road on Sunday is going to be fun that's for sure. :lol:
 
There’s a fine line between letting things go and not having control of the game. Erring towards the latter tonight.
 
Kag said:
There’s a fine line between letting things go and not having control of the game. Erring towards the latter tonight.
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Guy looks like he goes to the Jon Moss fitness centre! Very slow turning and keeping up with play.
 
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