DJ_NUFC

I would be honoured...

Poetic there from Joselu

Gayle and Joselu need to be done for spotfixing.

Dietmar Hamann dissed us publicly when he went to Liverpool, didn't he, saying something like "Newcastle don't even have a real training ground lolz." Cunt.

Have we ever had calls to sell our top goal scorer as we’ve had to sell Perez this season? Our fans are really thick sometimes.

This thread now has everything.

Much lower chance of losing due to VAR than losing due to incompetent reffing though Maybe, but I reckon the odds will be quite low for at least one team being knocked out of the competition directly due to a negative consequence of VAR. Probably multiple. I can definitely see it kicking off if VAR fucks up in a major way at the World Cup

XOXO

Clearly the conservative rhetoric in this thread is taking on toxic levels when it comes to tone Calm down, for fuck's sake.

Fair points. Does change the way I imagined VAR being rolled out.

Every single one of those rule changes you mention could be/were/are implemented at all levels. There is no reason they can't, unlike VAR. You clearly don't give a shit about any football that's not televised, that's up to you. I don't watch much of the lower leagues either. But I care about the fundamental basics of the football pyramid across our country (and by extension the world) and don't believe the top flight should have special status and effectively its own rules. What exactly does this have to do with televised or not? Whether in stadia or at home, you're gonna have to sit through video replays if VAR is implemented. And no need think I "don't give a shit" when I've said time and again that the goal is to make football fairer as a game, not be some elitist TV-watching wanker as you seem to have assumed I am. Absolutely kidding yourself if you think clubs are going to be installing video screens, or even that replays will be shown in grounds at all. That's something I've assumed would happen. If it doesn't, as part of VAR, then yeah, the in-person watching experience is going to differ from telly. That's an interesting difference I hadn't thought about, as I'd assumed they would be installing screens.

Every single one of those rule changes you mention could be/were/are implemented at all levels. There is no reason they can't, unlike VAR. You clearly don't give a shit about any football that's not televised, that's up to you. I don't watch much of the lower leagues either. But I care about the fundamental basics of the football pyramid across our country (and by extension the world) and don't believe the top flight should have special status and effectively its own rules. What exactly does this have to do with televised or not? Whether in stadia or at home, you're gonna have to sit through video replays if VAR is implemented. And no need think I "don't give a shit" when I've said time and again that the goal is to make football fairer as a game, not be some elitist TV-watching wanker as you seem to have assumed I am.

So we're back to square one No compromise or solutions can be suggested because there will always be someone who'll come by saying why the solutions to problems raised are "the worst."

We've made those mistakes too. Did we award player of the season awards to our longstanding emblematic problems, though? And someone beat me to it, we haven't signed someone like that since the Shepherd days.

There's absolutely no reason why having a review system, even a strict one where it's only ONE freaking referral per side, so two stoppages max per game, can't be quick and beneficial to the game. It will still do more to reduce human error without getting in most poeple's way.

O'Shea is one of the symbols of what's gone wrong with them over the years. Constantly signing Man U rejects and past-it players from other teams, and adding loanees.

You mean like how Allardyce & Mourinho teams have been doing for the last 10 years? Teams already slow down games tactically when 1-0 up away from home. It's actually unbearable already. We can go back and forth here forever, but we can just agree to disagree on this topic

I know this has been mentioned before time and again, but it would really help to look at how VAR is implemented in other sports. The review system in cricket and tennis would actually be perfect for footie. Each team gets only 2 or 3 reviews per game, decided by the on-pitch captain from each side. So this would eliminate the fears of players going down too easy or waiting "5 minutes for an unknown reason." The reason will be clear, and it will only be used in the most egregious circumstances. And if you use up all your reviews on shitty decisions or cheating, well too bad, then you lose them. That's how it works in cricket / tennis. And then we go back to just going by the ref's decision. This way, the maximum number of stoppages can be 4, for example, over a 90 minute period.

I agree, but the golden goal was a big change, which was scrapped. As were some of the other minor changes which added time to a game, like needing to have a player stretchered off in a head collision, etc., (which I'm for, of course). What I'm saying is, football, and all sports, are literally games which are always evolving with time and circumstance. As much as I hate Star Wars, I'm gonna quote from it: "Do not fight the winds of change, Anakin..."

LOL: http://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/who-we-are/the-laws/2001-2006.html And that's just like... 6 years.

The whole purist perspective is funny because the same purists seem to have forgotten or not paid attention to the plethora of changes to actual laws and rules of the game from country to country, from, yes, Kinshasa to Germany, even differing from competition to competition. Golden Goal rule, constant tinkering with the official off-side rule, the 6-second rule, etc. I wasn't aware all these had such a massive impact on me enjoying a pub league when these rules were being fucked about with from country to country, league to league.

How? Light-up subs boards? Erm, the sheer amount of fucking money involved in every thing from having sports psychologists, data analysts and sprawling scouting systems that encapsulate the globe, things your pub team don't have access to. Television rights, global audiences, etc. When billions are at stake, and decisions impact a team's survival or relegation (i.e. potentially monetary survival in the long term) based on some numpty's wrong call at the ultimate moment, why anyone would oppose a more level playing field between the rich and poor teams *within* the top leagues is beyond me. And I feel like the anti-VAR people are amplifying the negatives without even giving an inch to the potential of positives that VAR holds, if and when done right. But to not even give it a chance due to some *ideological* stance is like holding onto this glorious present and past whilst ignoring the inherent issues in absolutely shambolic refereeing decisions that has led to people calling for VAR in the first place.

I think it boils down to two groups: those that long for accurate, reality and data-based outcomes of football games, and those that are okay with a high error rate as long as the game doesn't change at all. I fall into the former category as I've spent far too long as a football fan depressed about what might have been had a particular call gone our way. I get the impression the schism is (generally, not exclusively) between people who experience football mainly in person and those who experience it mainly via television. Possibly, and this is a good point. I'm a foreigner so I've only experienced footie, and most sports, via the telly. I think it boils down to two groups: those that long for accurate, reality and data-based outcomes of football games*, and those that are okay with a high error rate as long as the game doesn't change at all. I fall into the former category as I've spent far too long as a football fan depressed about what might have been had a particular call gone our way. *in top flight leagues, because fuck everyone else playing the game in the literally thousands of other leagues, let's have our own rules This argument doesn't hold water for me because the top flight leagues are already different from thousands of other leagues. We already treat the summit of sports differently from their grassroot levels. This longing to keep the game the absolute same from Sunday leagues to the EPL seems to be unique to football fans, as I don't hear this from tennis, cricket, rugby, etc., sports where VAR has been implemented for years. It hasn't diminished enrollment into those sports, in fact those sports have only grown in popularity. Again, even though I disagree, I do understand where this argument is coming from.

I think it boils down to two groups: those that long for accurate, reality and data-based outcomes of football games, and those that are okay with a high error rate as long as the game doesn't change at all. I fall into the former category as I've spent far too long as a football fan depressed about what might have been had a particular call gone our way.

Agreed, a good and pure technological improvement would definitely worsen the game if it was misapplied in a heavy handed manner that no one is advocating for Dave's dangling the bait. It's been discussed ad nauseum on this forum that there are already fucking tons of stoppages in a regular football game, many of them needless, so it's not like VAR is going to be disrupting some 90-min non-stop game of pingpong. People are just afraid of change, it seems. And that's fine. I just think it's the wrong position to hold. Once, and if, perfected, or fine-tuned, VAR in football can be an awesome addition. Like cricket, tennis, rugby and American football, we need to create a custom usage for it that works within the parameters of football, so it doesn't hinder the game we love, and instead enhances it.