VAR and the Premier League

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

‘Misapplication of the laws’: VAR error leads to full replay of Belgian match

Genk were denied a penalty retake in defeat to Anderlecht and the ruling to overturn it is believed to be first of its kind in European football

www.theguardian.com

LOL how stupid is this. Part of me is kind of looking forward to seeing the ridiculous hole they dig for themselves with this sort of thing.

 

[skyscraper101]

Not sure if worthy of a new thread but I'm happy to see the whole 'blue card' sin bin idea getting largely dismissed by everyone. What football really doesn't need is more disruptive/unnecessary powers given to referees. Red and yellow cards are fine. Leave it alone.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Not sure if worthy of a new thread but I'm happy to see the whole 'blue card' sin bin idea getting largely dismissed by everyone. What football really doesn't need is more disruptive/unnecessary powers given to referees. Red and yellow cards are fine. Leave it alone.

There are certain things that seem worthy of a sin bin - examples off the top of my head bieng Chiellini's ultra-cynical pull back on Bukayo Saka in the last Euros final (never in a million years a red, but a yellow doesn't seem a fitting punishment), or Bruno Fernandes' 90 minute tirade against refs every game.

The main problem I have is that the result will be the worst 10 minutes of football in recorded history that follows; with feigned injuries, time-wasting, aimless passing around at the back, 9 behind the ball, hoof it anywhere and run the clock down. Ball in play for barely a minute, back up to full complement and on with the game.

The only way I could see it working would be with an hour long "ball in play" clock, and that's simply a change too far for football. There's no way it could reliably be replicated in the lower, non and Sunday leagues (where are all these 4th official/timekeepers coming from?), it would mean pub teams playing a completely different sport.

P.s. yes I know VAR isn't replicated in Sunday league, but that is just a tool to enforce (allegedly more reliably) the same rules facing both Liverpool and The Dog and Duck 2nd xi.

 

[two sheds]

Premier League clubs to vote on scrapping VAR

Premier League clubs are set to hold a vote at their annual general meeting next month on a proposal to abolish the video assistant referee (VAR) system from the start of next season. VAR has been used in the English top-flight since 2019, helping improve decision making but also generating...

www.nytimes.com

Rather than scrapping it you'd think they'd try to make it work properly. Learn from rugby, for example, where it doesn't seem to delay things and actually adds to the game.

 

[souljacker]

Premier League clubs to vote on scrapping VAR

Premier League clubs are set to hold a vote at their annual general meeting next month on a proposal to abolish the video assistant referee (VAR) system from the start of next season. VAR has been used in the English top-flight since 2019, helping improve decision making but also generating...

www.nytimes.com

Rather than scrapping it you'd think they'd try to make it work properly. Learn from rugby, for example, where it doesn't seem to delay things and actually adds to the game.

Or learn from every other country in Europe that seems to have got it right.

 

[The39thStep]

Premier League clubs to vote on scrapping VAR

Premier League clubs are set to hold a vote at their annual general meeting next month on a proposal to abolish the video assistant referee (VAR) system from the start of next season. VAR has been used in the English top-flight since 2019, helping improve decision making but also generating...

www.nytimes.com

Rather than scrapping it you'd think they'd try to make it work properly. Learn from rugby, for example, where it doesn't seem to delay things and actually adds to the game.

or learn from Denmark or have a Premiere League where there's is a 50+1 club voting ownership rule and then put whether to scrap VAR to them or keep it as it was supposed to be ie clear and obvious errors

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

The climate around refereeing has got so ridiculous that I don't think anything is going to keep people happy to be honest. Obviously fans have always moaned about refereeing decisions but now every club has a significant percentage of idiot fans who are convinced the refs are all against them and have a tediously long list of supposed outrages without which they would have ten more points or something - and it's not bad decisions or crowd pressure now, it's 'corruption' obviously. You watch a seemingly innocuous match with no obvious controversy and then you go online and discover that actually the ref has missed four obvious penalties and three definite sending offs. And clubs have started buying into this nonsense as well.

I'm not really convinced this can be improved by better use of the systems tbh. There's too much subjectivity and the attempts to make it more objective just seem to make it worse. I'd get rid of VAR just because of the delays tbh, and people can suck up the outrage.

 

[two sheds]

The managers are the worst - I like Klopp for what he's done at Liverpool but he's fucking atrocious when there's any chance of disputing a call. Similarly with Guardiola, and if fans see their managers do it that'll just inflame things. As I recall in the Italian league in the 60s it all got so bad that players were fined a certain amount if they raised one arm in protest, double that if they raised two arms, not sure whether they valued facepalms though.

I like the rugby approach that it's an automatic 10-yard penalty for dissent. That's another area the powers that be could learn from rugby, and I think yellow cards should also be accompanied by a 10-minute ban to try to stop the regular 'professional' fouls. Commentators are at fault too though with "he took one for the team there" unless they add "the fouling twat".

 

[surreybrowncap]

I like the rugby approach that it's an automatic 10-yard penalty for dissent. That's another area the powers that be could learn from rugby, and I think yellow cards should also be accompanied by a 10-minute ban to try to stop the regular 'professional' fouls. Commentators are at fault too though with "he took one for the team there" unless they add "the fouling twat".

Actually there was a 10 yard rule brought into the Premier League in 2001/02
Think it lasted about four years....

 

[two sheds]

too many penalties awarded for fouls originally in their own half?

 

[The39thStep]

Yellow cards are pretty much mandatory for dissent now and twice as many ( probably more when we see the final season figures) cards have been issued for dissent this season than last. Obviously, we haven't got any detailed data on what sort of dissent or whether this has actually led to less incidents of dissent or level of dissent.

I'm very cautious on rule changes as it seems as though every year a new rule or interpretation is brought in with the aim of improving the game which mainly leads to referees struggling with interpretation, more var reviews and ultimately poorer referring . VAR in many cases disempowers referees from making decisions as an incident will be reviewed and the 40 camera angle seems to be somewhat selectively employed to show/illustrate the referee the VAR assistant's interpretation rather than 'you might want to look at this again'. The other issue is the use of slow motion , in real time an incident may not be a clear and obvious error but in slow motion it might be. Trouble is the game isn't played in slow motion.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

They've dug themselves a big hole with the clear and obvious error thing haven't they. In principal I think that's fine but there's no clear and obvious line where it applies and they've definitely gone way past that a lot of the time. If it takes you three minutes and fifteen camera angles to decide it's not clear and obvious is it?

 

[two sheds]

Even that's difficult though - after three minutes the last of the fifteen camera angles might show a clear and obvious head butt that on the other angles just looked accidental.

 

[skyscraper101]

They shouldn't scrap it, they should improve it. Mic up the referees and the VAR people so we can hear their discussions on TV like in the rugby, and not only will they be more self conscious about their decisions (a good thing) because they know it'll be broadcast, but people will be better informed about how they came to the decision. Why this is still not a thing is beyond me.

But instead now they're talking about scrapping it altogether. By definition we could end up going back to situations like what happened with the Frank Lampard non-goal in 2010. It's so backwards.

 

[The39thStep]

They've dug themselves a big hole with the clear and obvious error thing haven't they. In principal I think that's fine but there's no clear and obvious line where it applies and they've definitely gone way past that a lot of the time. If it takes you three minutes and fifteen camera angles to decide it's not clear and obvious is it?

Yup. If you watch that video I posted up and then look where we are now where VAR search for things to analyse then you can see where it's taking us. Of course, we also have several professional organisations and companies with their strategic leads and PR defending/promoting VAR like the Professional Referees Organisation or PGMOL . SKY and BT have their snouts in the trough etc etc

 

[The39thStep]

They shouldn't scrap it, they should improve it. Mic up the referees and the VAR people so we can hear their discussions on TV like in the rugby, and not only will they be more self conscious about their decisions (a good thing) because they know it'll be broadcast, but people will be better informed about how they came to the decision. Why this is still not a thing is beyond me.

But instead now they're talking about scrapping it altogether. By definition we could end up going back to situations like what happened with the Frank Lampard non-goal in 2010. It's so backwards.

How many years have we heard that it needs to be improved?

 

[Lord Camomile]

VAR in many cases disempowers referees from making decisions

I don't think I've ever quite grasped why this is a problem, or the reasons for protecting the 'sanctity' of the referee's authority (not your wording, just all I could come up with).

Why isn't it just a team effort? Like in plenty of other sports, where there's generally one person making the final calls, but that person gets input from a whole team of officials. I really don't see much problem in "ah, something you missed here", "oh, yes, I did, for I am but human and can't catch everything, especially at breakneck speed, let's correct that".

Offsides are actually a really good example of this. For a human to call it, they have to be watching a) the point of contact on the ball, b) the positioning of the 2nd to last defending player at point of contact with the ball and c) the positioning of the furthest attacker at point of contact with the ball, all at the same time, at super-quick time, very possibly across 10s of yards. In many situations that just ain't fucking possible for a human to do. So, bring in additional help.

And yes, offsides have their own problem with the "mm here, or mm there" stuff, but that's just the nature of the rule - wherever you draw the line, there will be incidents that are a mm either side of it. No way round that, far as I can see.

 

[Silas Loom]

Offside detection should and eventually will be entirely automated. Even at grassroots level. The technical challenge is minimal.

 

[Lord Camomile]

How many years have we heard that it needs to be improved?

Genuine Q: why does it work in other sports, and even other leagues, apparently, but not in English football?

The fact English football can't seem to get it to work might not necessarily indicate it can't work.

(I'd also agree that beyond the technology and its deployment, the culture around it plays a part too, in terms of how players, managers, fans and commentators talk about and discuss it. There has to be a certain amount of good faith to all that, which often seems to be lacking)

 

[The39thStep]

Genuine Q: why does it work in other sports, and even other leagues, apparently, but not in English football?

The fact English football can't seem to get it to work might not necessarily indicate it can't work.

(I'd also agree that beyond the technology and its deployment, the culture around it plays a part too, in terms of how players, managers, fans and commentators talk about and discuss it. There has to be a certain amount of good faith to all that, which often seems to be lacking)

I hate to answer a question with another question but why should it work in football just because it 'works' in other sports? I'm not against the use of technology in football, I think the goal line stuff has been generally good for example.

As for other leagues, I watch a fair bit of the Portuguese League and some games from the Spanish and Italian leagues and the same criticisms are made even though there are some differences in the way it is implemented and the relationship of the TV commentators to the VAR officials. The Swedish League recently voted to reject VAR in its entirety.

 

[Hollis]

Genuine Q: why does it work in other sports, and even other leagues, apparently, but not in English football?

yes - in Rugby it seems to be actively enjoyed, and nobody seems to be complaining about it taking ages for them to reach a decision. Maybe that's because rugby is more of a start/stop game anyway - ditto tennis.

I think on balance, I'd be in favour of scrapping it in football.. just go with the ref.

 

[two sheds]

It's a lot better in rugby partially because you can hear the ref's decision making processes as they go along which makes things interesting and also continually confirms the rules. You don't seem to get the protracted disagreements from fans about forward passes that you do with football offsides too, though.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Genuine Q: why does it work in other sports, and even other leagues, apparently, but not in English football?

The fact English football can't seem to get it to work might not necessarily indicate it can't work.

(I'd also agree that beyond the technology and its deployment, the culture around it plays a part too, in terms of how players, managers, fans and commentators talk about and discuss it. There has to be a certain amount of good faith to all that, which often seems to be lacking)

I think part of the problem is that the application of the rules in football has always been basically a bit of a fudge. A genuine strict application of the rules would make the game totally unwatchable and no-one really wants that. The role of the ref historically is as much about deciding if it's enough of a foul to warrant a free kick as it is about making a foul/not foul decision as such. Hence the wailing about 'soft' fouls - basically 'OK it was a foul but we should have got away with it.'

 

[two sheds]

Not sure it would be actually unwatchable if fouls were called for 'shoulder charges' that are actually pushes in the back and for the atrocious pulling and shoving you get in the penalty area for just about every corner. It might be unwatchable for a bit but players would soon get the hang of it.

What sort of things were you thinking?

 

[two sheds]

I mean, VAR would come in handy sometimes

Football referee banned after celebrating title with team he officiated

A Dutch football referee has been reportedly banned from officiating for life after he was filmed celebrating with a team he refereed on the final day of the season.Local reports say Jan Smit, 61, from Opmeer in the Netherlands, officiated a game between St George and SV De Valken in the fourth...

www.indy100.com

NH Nieuws reports Smit made a number of controversial decisions, including sending off three SV De Valken players and a member of their coaching staff.

He also added 15 minutes on at the end of the game as St George was losing and needed a point to secure the title.

 

[The39thStep]

Report about Sweden

VAR: Sweden only top league in Uefa's top 30 to reject technology

Sweden is the only elite league in Uefa's top 30 to not have VAR, BBC Sport went to find out how and why the supporters turned against it.

www.bbc.com