Premier League Thread 2023/2024

[Super_horns]

3 hours ago, fox in the sox said:

There is no way an experienced VAR official could just make the decision and not draw lines. The only explanation I can think of is maybe they were looking at the wrong pictures.

Communication break down /lack of focus somewhere.

Wasn’t as if this was at the end of a long game with lots of decisions having to be made .

What was the assistant VAR doing ?

[grobyfox1990]

1 hour ago, Tielemans63 said:

Sorry if already posted, but this is just ridiculous:

 

 The VAR guy said "check complete" because he thought the on-field decision was a goal. That's so amateurish

Omg. So many questions.. isn’t he watching the game?!! How did he not know the onfield decision was offside, when even I did whilst cursorily watching at the pub. Isn’t there communication between ref and var? How did he not realise his error when the goal was not given and the game restarted? Madness 

[Bert]

Apparently the VAR thought the goal had been given so went and said check complete  

[Guest Col city fan]

I recall saying on here a year or so ago that VAR was a football gambler’s nemesis. It stops goals being given far far more than it enables goals to be given.

NOW they’ll start to be legal battles I’m sure. Not for this case, but where more money is involved. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 1 October 2023 by Col city fan

[Matt]

9 hours ago, Danizen said:

Is Pep losing his hunger?

 

They've lost two games in a row. That isn't that strange. What is strange is that after both games, he's come out and congratulated the other team and said they deserved it. He's normally notorious for only dishing out praise to teams he's just pumped 5-0.

I think I saw he'd congratulated Wolves on defending well, unless that was a sarcastic comment normally its "they didn't play how we wanted them to play wah wah wah".

 

Edited 1 October 2023 by Matt

[StanSP]

9 hours ago, Tielemans63 said:

Sorry if already posted, but this is just ridiculous:

 

 The VAR guy said "check complete" because he thought the on-field decision was a goal. That's so amateurish

That doesn't make full sense considering the play restarts with a free kick for offside. When they set up for that free kick, how is Darren England not in the refs ear saying 'hold on, we thought the onfield decision was goal, do not restart' or words to that effect? 

 

That's very poor on the officials side. 

[Lionator]

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer team. 

[Super_horns]

24 minutes ago, StanSP said:

That doesn't make full sense considering the play restarts with a free kick for offside. When they set up for that free kick, how is Darren England not in the refs ear saying 'hold on, we thought the onfield decision was goal, do not restart' or words to that effect? 

 

That's very poor on the officials side. 

So at some point they aren’t allowed to change their mind but surely common sense could have been used to save all this embarrassment.

In theory it should have been the perfect example to show where VAR is useful but ended up with this mess !

Edited 1 October 2023 by Super_horns

[st albans fox]

8 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

So at some point they aren’t allowed to change their mind but surely common sense could have been used to save all this embarrassment.

In theory it should have been the perfect example to show where VAR is useful but ended up with this mess !

The protocol being more important than the right decision tells you all you need to know about VAR …….

 

It’s our game but it’s been taken over by greed and red tape ……

Edited 1 October 2023 by st albans fox

[StanSP]

11 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

So at some point they aren’t allowed to change their mind but surely common sense could have been used to save all this embarrassment.

In theory it should have been the perfect example to show where VAR is useful but ended up with this mess !

Yeah surely you think, wait I could make a good decision here after a comms error. It's where officials have almost been brainwashed to make one decision and throw all common sense out the window at the same time. 

 

It's bonkers. 

 

On the flip side, it is hilarious seeing Liverpool fans go all batshit crazy and talk about being given points of financial compensation if they lose out on the title. As if teams against them won't suffer serious howlers in favour of Liverpool. They'll be hushed up and won't say a thing if it doesn't benefit them... 

[The Bear]

The whole point of the offside check is to do it any way whether a goal has been given on field or not. So that excuse from England is paper thin at best. 

[whoareyaaa]

5 minutes ago, The Bear said:

The whole point of the offside check is to do it any way whether a goal has been given on field or not. So that excuse from England is paper thin at best. 

I know it don't make sense one bit.

[RowlattsFox]

I can almost see that the VAR ref could have got confused whether the goal was originally given or not. But there are enough people involved to rectify this before the game starts again. 

Need to use clear language like goal or no goal. 

[fox in the sox]

In rugby the ref communicates with the T-MO so he would say ‘the goal has been disallowed for offside, can you check it?’ There is obviously no communication in football.

[Matt]

According to the PGMO (Professional Game Match Officials) Premier League referee makes around 245 decisions per game, three times more than an average player touches the ball over 90 minutes. That’s one decision every 22 seconds.

 

Approximately 45 of these decisions are technical – whether goal-kicks, corners or throw-ins – leaving around 200 decisions to judging physical contact and disciplinary actions.

 

Of those 200, around 35 are visible decisions where an action is taken (fouls, restarts), and 165 are non-visible, where play is allowed to continue.

 

In total, refs make around five errors per game, meaning they are right 98 per cent of the time.

 

The number of decisions referees have to make has increased by around three per cent in each of the last two seasons, and that is only likely to go up in the coming years as discussion around rule changes intensifies.

 

The assistant referee makes on average 50 decisions each game; 45 of these are pure offside judgements, with four of these resulting in offside flags. Their accuracy? Again, a staggering 98 per cent. (Sky Sports)

Article from 2018 - How Accurate Are Referees? The PR v The Research – The Tomkins Times

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I mean, I think 98% is a load of old codswallop but referees did like to remind us of how reliable they are and since the introduction of VAR i'd somewhat argue there are more bigger, game changing mistakes happening.

 

I mentioned it in a thread discussing referees in the Championship the other week I think the referees are better, because they have no VAR to hide behind, albeit it more card happy (Although there were 11 yellows and 2 reds in the Tottenham v Liverpool games...)

 

I was an advocate for VAR, I thought it was needed and naively thought there would be no more mistakes, I didn't consider that things would still be down to matter of opinion but that aside clear and obvious (no pun itended) mistakes are still happening and teams are being robbed - before VAR you just had to suck it up and get on with it, now we have VAR there is no excuse for the mistakes - if thats the case i'm sure we'd universally agree whats the point and to scrap VAR.

 

Unfortunately the games to entrenched in VAR that it's here to stay.

 

Edited 1 October 2023 by Matt

[UniFox21]

Genuinely laughable. 

I don't understand how highly trained professionals have managed to cock up this badly. 

 

For once Liverpool actually have a reason to complain. 

[David Lowe]

‘Check complete’ is too vague. Surely after this error they will now start telling the ref more. If England had said ‘check complete and it is onside’ or ‘check complete and you can award the goal’ it would have avoided this confusion.

[Super_horns]

I notice every game last night on MOTD had some sort of VAR call/debate which just shows how much it really does dominate the game now.

[Chelmofox]

Did the tour of the KP yesterday for the boys birthday, and when in the media room the subject of VAR came up. I had completely naively assumed that the VAR officials were at the ground for the game, but of course once we got talking it came back to me that they are in Stockley Park. 

 

However, my immediate reaction was that being at VAR HQ for the games must create a massive disconnect between the sets of officials. I get the premise that this setup is trying to remove ground bias from the decisions, but surely if the VAR officials need to be in constant communication with the on pitch officials, it would be better if they were operating as a team during the game, having pre match and half time sessions together to discuss the games and issues etc.

 

Being off site must be so disconnected from what is going on. Might be wrong but in this instance it sounds like communication breakdown and then rigidily sticking with protocol has caused this one and I bet its because the sets of officials just got lost in what was going on and were not communicating effectively.  If they work like they do with the Rugby TMO, they would work as a team rather than a 'quality gate'.

 

I've long said we should scrap it unless only the technology can make instant decisions (like it does with goal line tech). I thought we had the tech to do instance offside decisions to i'm confused why we are still doing all this drawing lines rubbish. I'm actually not keen on overriding handball or foul decisions and would rather they were dealt with post match, issuing retrospective bans for dangerous play etc.

 

 

[Nalis]

The one time I'd want this to happen to Liverpool it happens to be against another team with unbearable fans

[The Doctor]

31 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

In rugby the ref communicates with the T-MO so he would say ‘the goal has been disallowed for offside, can you check it?’ There is obviously no communication in football.

This is absolutely it. It's not a hard system to get right, simple communication: "goal scored by Diaz, looked offside, is there any reason to disallow the goal" "check complete, no reason to disallow" and this wouldn't happen.

 

Ultimately what VAR is doing is just exposing what we already knew, that British refs are incredibly incompetent (right down to the grassroots lot, I had a ref a few weeks ago not award a penalty for handball on the line after the defender jumped and punched it because an attacker was closing down and "what were they supposed to do")

[PhillippaT]

1 hour ago, Lionator said:

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer team. 

Now they know how everyone else feels when playing at Anfield

[Foxdiamond]

35 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

In rugby the ref communicates with the T-MO so he would say ‘the goal has been disallowed for offside, can you check it?’ There is obviously no communication in football.

This. It seems football is too arrogant and or amateur in attitude to learn from other sports

[Chelmofox]

40 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

In rugby the ref communicates with the T-MO so he would say ‘the goal has been disallowed for offside, can you check it?’ There is obviously no communication in football.

Bang on, and a shortened version of what i was trying to say. VAR has been setup as a quality gate, where as on field and off field officials should be working as a team.

[Super_horns]

15 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

This. It seems football is too arrogant and or amateur in attitude to learn from other sports

They seemed to think ref had awarded a goal?

 

Surely even without communication it would have been obvious to spot that hadn't happened. 

 

Basically sounds like the VAR wasn't watching at all. 

Edited 1 October 2023 by Super_horns