To hate VAR or to hate the LOTG? That is the question [R]

Condolences to his family.

 

VAR is having such a wonderful effect on the game. like hell ....

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/55031796

New rules and new technology were supposed to reduce the number of controversial incidents in the Premier League, but players and managers appeared to be just as frustrated with refereeing decisions after a number of incidents on Saturday.

It led to an exasperated Manchester City midfielder Kevin de Bruyne questioning whether there have been too many law changes in football in recent years, leaving everyone to be unsure of where they stand.

"I've been playing professional football for 12 years and for nine years there were no rule changes, the past three years there have been a lot. I don't know why; football is such a nice game," he told Sky Sports.

The handball law was tightened at the start of this season, with the International Football Association Board (Ifab) defining the boundary between the shoulder and the arm as the bottom of the armpit.

The Premier League also decided to take a much stricter approach to handball decisions, in line with the rules changes introduced in Europe the previous campaign.

They are just two of a number of rule changes, tweaks or innovations in the last six years, including:

• The bringing in of goalline technology
• The introduction of video assistant referees
• Penalties being re-taken if a goalkeeper encroaches off their line
• The assistant referee's flag staying down for marginal offside offences until the passage of play has passed
• More reliance on the referee's review area, to analyse decisions using the TV monitor
• Players now able to kick the ball in any direction at kick-off, with the kicker permitted to be in the opposition's half of the pitch

 

If thewy do, let's combine the suit with us and Real Madrid/Ramos ... either way we are onto the same winner ...

 

yes, but that says nothing about offside calls as part of this discussion is also delving in that direction. If a guy is a millimetre offside and the ref (going top the monitor) decides not to call it, the opposing manager will then (and rightly so) be demanding the removal of the ref from the premiership. We can all see when it is and isn;t offside. The point of th eproblem is that we don;t agree with it being called.

The offside view will still be the same offside view wherever the ref is standing/seated at his monitor. It's illovgical to assume a difference here with regards to offside (although I too know there would be as I know that some of the refs would cheat the rules in the most miniscule cases)

 

James Milner fears he cannot be alone in ‘falling out of love’ with football after Liverpool’s 1-1 draw at Brighton was dominated by a series of controversial VAR decisions.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/28/jame...ol-var-controversy-13671230/?ito=newsnow-feed

 

Welbeck had very little play on the ball, and even if Robertson completely missed everything the play would have resulted in Liverpool possession. On top of that the dive makes it look and feel really shitty. But I think this is pretty clear, just like the VVD-Lamela incident... you can't just whiff on a clearance and kick someone in the foot, not these days with these replays, and expect to get away with it.

If no VAR I'm sure he would have gotten away with it, and the degree to which it really impacted play is a grey area. The issue to what degree to you punish a clear foul in the box which doesn't impact the result of the phase of play? It's a big question.

 

THIS JUST IN ON HANDBALL!

I'm told the handball law will be tweaked for next season so contact when the arm is above the shoulder will NOT be a mandatory penalty.

So, Eric Dier may not be penalised as he was vs. Newcastle.

More in Insider Notebook: https://t.co/qn7vTZZ6Uz pic.twitter.com/W12iUHMpeh

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonESPN) November 27, 2020

Interesting they are now adjusting back from their more hard-line trend over last few years, which has been, it seems to me, focused on eliminating the subjectivity from handball. This seems to scale that back a bit, and introduce a little more subjectivity for specific situations. At least from where we are now. Which is probably good?

I really have no idea why the Dier handball, which seems to be ground zero for this change, is considered controversial. I understand a player needs to use their arms to propel themselves into the air, doesn't mean it should make them immune from punishment if their stray arm impacts play and it certainly doesn't mean you need to have your arms splayed in the way Dier did.

But either way, seems like they are addressing this.

 

That's the real question to me. Welbeck was out of the play regardless and there wasn't really enough contact to force him down (it took him a few steps to locate the ground). So is it really a foul?

 

None of that dictates a foul within the rules as far as I can see... so I think the answer to that is a fairly clear yes. And it's the same when Salah is impeded even if he's not necessarily getting to a through ball or whatever, when everyone else whines about how he's "diving".

I'm all for putting more official focus on whether or not the incident actually impacted play, that would be a good change, I just don't think that's a current requirement.

 

Sweet Jesus. This from the guy who's argued a thousand times that an offside of a millimeter has to be called because "that's the rule".

You couldn't make this shit up.

 

He is not alone. Most fans would scrap VAR tomorrow if asked. Unfortunately, it's up to a bunch of apparatchik tossers to decide these things.....

So James Milner and I may end up living on a desert island .. well, at least, he'll be great company- can;t say the same for his luck!


The simple fact is that the ref fvcked this up, because despite all the silly arguments - it's actually his decision and fully within his remit to decide that Wellbeck would (a) never have scored or regained possession, (b) was not hurt, and (c) that the collision was accidental and if it had not happened the above ( (a) and (b) ) would be the same and Andy Robertson would have 99% likely cleared the ball. That's all there is to see there. Refs do this all the time, just like that. Why do they do it differently when placed under the microscope??

My honest guess is that the ref did not see the contact and that if he had seen it in a pre-VAR situation he would have said (just in his own mind) nothign happened to affect anything there. Giving a penalty would be ridiculous. But we are now in the age of th eridiculous. Get used to it.

Rubbish..... the deat of football....

There - put that in a refereeing manual, not the other bullsh!t adumbrated earlier in this discussion.

The problem with people who have an investement in VAR is that, by virtue of desire, want to see what would not otherwise exist. This has some value (debatable) for close offsides but not for anything else.

 

That's not the question Delay.
Because with that one question you invalidate every time a ref never gave a penalty for a 50-50 goalkeeping or defender's challenge when it was obvious that the chasing player couldn;t possibly reach the ball before it went out of bounds.
I've seen that happen hundreds of times. Those same 50-50s are always called when the player could obviously reach the ball.......

 

My big question to you is this: Let's put aside whether the VAR is making the right or wrong decision. Do you enjoy the way football has become since the implementation of VAR? Do you think it has positively impacted the game overall? Not just on the field but to the supporter? Just curious.

 

I know I've harped on this before but I think the big problem with VAR is that it's made a game filled with "shades of gray" into a binary one. There used to be so many examples of "it depends" when I was explaining various rules to first time football observers. To me, that's what made the game special. It was subjective. Was that frustrating at times? Sure. But in the end, what the men on the field decided was final. You put the ball in the net and you see the linesman running back up the line, it was a damn goal. Now (like so many things in this era) all the joy has been sucked out of the game. Steralized and safe. Micromanaged. Ironically inconsistent.

I hate it.

 

at this stage we have a huge majority of fans, most managers, and now players bitching every damn week - almost every game. something's got to give or VAR will kill football. it's as simple as that.

 

I fear it's not that simple. I fear that we've opened a pandora's box and there's no going back.

 

I think that's the same as what I said.

 

The Dutch have set up their own rules for VAR offsides.

 

that was posted a couple weeks ago speke.

 

Oh well. I missed it.

 

shame on you !!!!!

 

Putting aside whether or not VAR is making the "right" or "wrong" decision almost entirely defeats the purpose since that's what successful VAR vs unsuccessful VAR is actually about... whether it's consistently getting things more right or not. I don't differentiate between positives "to the supporter" and "on the field", because it presumes the supporter knows best which is obviously false.

However, both the rule changes and VAR as a whole have positives and negatives, and I personally think the positives are more important to uphold than the negatives are bad enough to throw out the system (if such a thing was possible, which I don't think it is). So that probably answers your question. That said the negatives are a gigantic annoyance, the ways in which VAR controversy dominates conversation about the game right now makes it feel like to most people the positive impacts of VAR doesn't matter or isn't worth it. While I think that's wrong, increasingly I can still see the point of people who feel that way.

Whether the positives outweigh the negatives will be up to the person. As frustrating as it is I prefer there not be obvious bad calls as I've said a bunch of times in these threads, and obvious offside calls and very obvious penalty misses are completely gone from the game. That is progress. Doesn't mean I like the close toenail offsides or the totally random policy regarding use of the monitor, for instance... I hate those things.

 

I'm all for the Dutch system. I just wonder if there are any repercussions coming for this kind of unilateral decision-making, whether from FIFA or UEFA or whichever organization is determined as much as possible to have the same rules across all top leagues.

 

Seen that before and think it's a good idea.

 

I'm surprised so many people who say they hate it and the joy is gone and it's a farce are still watching.