Aston Villa vs Liverpool FC - EPL - Nov 2 [R]

I agree, there. If'n they had just said, it was too close for there to be a clear and obvious error, we would have all grumbled but accepted it as it was that close. The additional step just caused the Premier League to be held to the ridicule it deserves.

 

I have a superb idea! VAR made a clear an obvious error on Firmino’s goal. To make sure this doesn’t happen again, why not have a VAR Verification Panel (VAR-VP) to review all VAR decisions?

 

Interesting article in The Liverpool Echo. Andy Gray(!) of all people, working for beIN Sports, shows how he thinks VAR redrew and redrew the lines until it found Firmino offside.

 

So, in the last two league matches the, where we have had to come from behind, the equaliser has not come from the usual suspects. Henderson against Spurs last week and Robertson this week. Well in lads, and keep it up.

 

What an afternoon for Mané:
1. Gave away the free kick and the follow up free kick that led to Villa’s goal.
2. Got booked for diving (not).
3. Heaton made one of the saves of the game from him when he pressaged Robertson’s goal at the far post.
4. Supplied the cross for Robertson’s goal.
5. Took a serious kick in the mush as he scored the winner with an impossible header in the 95th minute.

Not all of the above was positive, but what a day!

 

An even better day, then!

 

Maybe they should change the rule to "if we have to get out the digital rulers and protractors, it's not f ucking offside." Offside needs to be clear and obvious. Clear and obvious for the AR to raise the flag (in which it never should've been raised yesterday on Bobby) and clear and obvious for them to overrule a goal.

The whole intent of the offside rule is so that attackers can't camp out in the opponents box and get balls fed to them from all over the pitch. When we start having to measure millimeters and saying your "armpit" is offside (even after you re-drew the line incorrectly), you're not getting any kind of advantage. This is ridiculous.

 

Great great plan but then if we have an independent (no ref panel) to watch the watchers. You won't have refs watching TV supporting refs on the pitch.

Call it the Atkinson watch rule.

 

When the decision comes down to such fine margins, it all depends where the VAR official decides to draw the lines (which is still subjective). So we end up in a situation of “too close to call”. However, just
Ike pre VAR, someone has to make the call and when it’s that close you can’t really complain either way.

 

Talking of whom, he’s had a dreadful afternoon at Goodison Park.

 

When it’s so close that it subjectively comes down to where a line is drawn through someone’s shoulder, IMO it should just be called “level” and advantage given to the attacker.

 

If I’d have been playing in the VAR era my long arms would have been offside for about 50 goals 😕

— Peter Crouch (@petercrouch) November 3, 2019

 

Errrrr, even your spider arms can't be offside Peter old mate.

On the other had, if you had extra large armpits .............

 

Especially if Flanno was still playing for us.

 

it should be toe or heel for offside only, not the thigh or whatever imagine Hamsik and Aubameyang getting done offside for their Hair?

 

So his arm doesn't count? (I thought it was "any part" of the attacker's body.)

Anyway - at the risk of pointing out the obvious - If his armpit is offside then his arm is a tad more offside. Since the average runner definitely uses arms to generate motion.....

All of which is beside the glaring pointlessness of adjudicating over such meaningless measurements. (As pointed out by the Villa fans earlier whilst they awaited their goal's adjudication.
Fvck VAR
Fvck VAR
Fvck VAR...
I believe they were singing this.... bloody hilarious....

 

It’s any body part that can score. So arms are excluded.

Firmino’s case is probably the most subjective that can occur as someone has to adjudicate where shoulder ends and arm begin. This is the only part of the body that has a border between scoring and unable to score body parts.

 

Heard a very good argument on talkSport of all places as to why the goal was disallowed and it had little to do with VAR.

As Mané crossed the ball, Firmino holds his run and…goes in time.

But the linesman gets it wrong and has his flag up before Firmino makes contact.

Heaton (and Villa defenders) puts his hand up, calling for the off, and stops challenging for the ball, stops playing.

Firmino slots home.

Now the ref, the linesman and VAR have a sticky situation.


The lino has flagged, Heaton and Villa have switched off and because of that Firmino has scored. So VAR has to do something to bail the linesman out, lest Villa go nuts and everyone starts screaming conspiracies about giving the title to Liverpool. So they invent the crime of offside by armpit. And this goes a long way to validating Andy Gray/Chris Kamara’s take that VAR fiddled with things until they got the decision they wanted.

Of course, had the goal been given, other than the howls from the peanut gallery, Villa would have been reminded about playing to the whistle.

 

That may have had something to do with the eventual call. Lucky for the linesman it was so close that VAR could effectively fudge it either way.

At the end of the day, the whole thing is really not a big deal. In the same scenario last year, everyone would have said “ooooh, that’s a tight call” and shrugged it off. IMO, VAR is really there to catch bad offside calls which are errors in the magnitude of inches, feet or yards. In these situations, VAR is definitely an improvement, uncontroversial and easy to do very quickly.

 

It was one of the best I've ever seen too. Incredible skill to power glance that backwards.