Kaizero

From my point of view, with regards to my side of the argument on the subject, it's that whilst it's undeniable that the effects exist – I can't comprehend the logic behind it existing en masse. A quick google search tells me the odds of getting in a car accident is 1 in 366 (regardless of the severity of the "accident, so any accident and not just accidents resulting in injury/death), given the amount of car rides the average person takes over the course of a year, the risk of an accident* appears, and feels, quite high. i've never gotten in a car and worried about the chance of an accident happening, though. And I guess that's the crux of my issue trying to comprehend why some people (not all) complain about VAR ruining their goal-celebratory experience as a supporter watching a match. To me, it feels like these people have been told the odds of a goal being overturned and can't get it out of their heads, thus making them unable to celebrate goals as they used to. But the same people, if told the odds of being in a car crash, wouldn't give that a second thought or let the statistic affect their "enjoyment" of a car ride. That's the point I'm "stuck" at, because I don't understand why one thing is different to all others, seemingly just because it's football-related I don't really understand why the fact the "waiting period" now exists really factors into any of these scenarios. Before VAR the ref would blow his whistle after the ball crosses the goal line to either award the goal or disallow it. After VAR, the possibility that the ref blows his whistle after the ball has crossed the goal line to call for a VAR review has been introduced – so far we're on the same page. But the ref blowing his whistle to call for a VAR review doesn't remove the moment the ball crosses the goal line, which should be the moment of spontaneous celebration for supporters of the scoring team. The "wait" to discover if the goal stands or not is a new aspect of the modern game, but it's clearly a positive – as fewer goals that should have been disallowed, stand, and more goals that shouldn't have been disallowed, also stand. Pierluigi Collina described his view on the "wait" as something that inherently shouldn't stop spontaneous celebrations occurring the moment fans observe the ball cross the goal line, as well as adding a "secondary moment of celebration" in the cases where a goal is awarded that was originally disallowed – or a goal sent for a VAR check, standing. Which, according to him, created more celebration amongst fans rather than less. Now, I fully accept that him being the FIFA referee boss and one of the men spearheading VAR's implementation and continued development means he'll be speaking with a fair amount of bias in his takes. Still, I struggle to make it not make sense. –––––––––––– TL;DR I don't think I'll ever understand it, but I acknowledge the fact that it has an effect on a lot of people. The main reason it bothers me is that I feel it's an argument that overshadows arguments being made that could actually improve VAR for the better, as no change/improvement to VAR will ever remove the possibility that a goal gets overturned by it – ensuring goals scored are legitimate kinda is its main reason for existing, after all. In short; I'll not understand why anyone would rather the below goal never happens than there being a "waiting time" for VAR to give it:

I agree that from your subjective standpoint, it may not hold true. But, again: You are literally admitting that you're only doing what you're complaining about to yourself, by yourself, based solely on the fact a technology exists. That being a technology where it's, statistically for NUFC, 97.38% certain it won't happen when NUFC score a goal. If something happened 1 in 42 times, I'd not live my life assuming that 1 time out of 42 would happen every time it happened. It serves no purpose to even think about that 1 in 42 chance existing as you'd not do it for pretty much anything else that'd have a 1 in 42 chance of happening. If VAR overturns a goal, damn, okay. Guess that happened If the chances of VAR overturning a goal were significantly higher than they actually are, I'd probably share your view on the matter. But it's not, so I don't, and I struggle to understand the thought process behind it. As mentioned, more asteroids out of 100 asteroids similar to the 2032 asteroid reported in the media recently would impact earth than the amount of goals out of 100 likely to be overturned by VAR. Everyone nodded in agreement when it came to chances of the asteroid impacting earth being miniscule and nothing to really worry about whatsoever, yet something with an even less chance of happening (per 100 possibilities) somehow ruins people's experience of celebrating goals? I'm not trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. I genuinely can't wrap my head around the thought process behind this, and I would actually be grateful if someone managed to make me understand it. I've tried to explain why I don't understand it, and my reasoning for not understanding it. I'd wholeheartedly welcome someone doing the same for why it makes sense. That said, I don't really think anyone actively posting in this thread is very likely to change their standpoints on this matter anytime soon – so this is probably as good a point as any to just agree to disagree 🤝🏼 (I'd still love an in-depth breakdown of the reasoning behind why VAR ruins goal celebrations for people, meaning deeper than the surface level "just knowing VAR exists ruins it" that's been repeated quite a bit 🙏🏼 Also, this goes without saying, but I genuinely value your opinions (goes for pretty much everyone that's posted in here about VAR since my initial post) and even though we sometimes disagree, I fully respect everyone's opinion about pretty much everything other than, say, "noncing isn't that bad" and similar I know I've had a tendency to end up sounding way more aggressive/conflict-seeking that I've ever intended recently, but that's never been my intent and apologies to anyone whose feathers I've accidentally ruffled if I've come across that way

There's no need to make an argument against something that's not even put forward as an argument, it's just subjective opinion written as a novelization. VAR doesn't line the pockets of anyone, it's fucking expensive. Nobody is saying kids matches should have VAR technology used, nor could that ever be a reality due to the high costs incurred by implementing it. It also seems to argue that VAR somehow creates "distrust", when it is proven to increase the amount of correct decisions made by referees (even though it still has errors – which is why I'm of the opinion it shouldn't have been introduced until they'd sorted all those issues out, and in favor of "benching" VAR until they do). The PL itself (I'm aware its a biased source and could have reached the numbers it's done by adapting stats to fit said bias) has claimed VAR has made a PL season now have 96% correct decisions vs. 82% pre-VAR. Now, someone else brought up "who decides what a correct/incorrect decision was after the fact", which is very easy to answer; anyone familiar with the Laws of the Game and/or any national FA imposed rules to consider, reviewing the footage of incidents that occured. It goes without saying that some of these incidents will be so close they just couldn't objectively be called for either player/side, even with hindsight. But the majority of decisions/incidents can be objectively called by referencing the Laws of the Game and/or any local rules that may or may not apply. All that said, my main argument to the weird England-fanfic bit in your spoiler, would be this:

You absolutely can. The amount of times it's been unclear whether a goal would receive a VAR review taking a negligible amount of time longer than it takes a linesman to decide whether to raise their flag or not is so low I can't even think of any examples off the top of my head. As a non-local, and thus someone that watches most our games on the TV rather than in-person, my experience is that I know quicker (from the commentators) that a VAR review is to take place than I'd know a lino had raised their flag for offside (as you'd have to wait for the camera to cut to the linesman before you'd know). Whilst I understand that it's vastly different when watching in person in a stadium, as you can just look at the lino yourself rather than wait for the feed to cut to the lino with a raised flag – the fact I know in the back of my mind that the feed could cut to a lino with a raised flag, sometimes taking up to a minute to do so, doesn't have any effect on my immediate joy/celebration of a goal. I'd only restrain any joy/celebration of a goal scored that I'd seen something that could make it be overturned happen in the build-up with my own eyes, thus expecting either a raised flag or a VAR check. I realize that the actual argument I was trying to make has become lost in a semantics discussion, though. That being the fact there's so many valid, genuine, and reasonable arguments that could be made against VAR. Either with the intent of having it stop being used, forcing faster and greater development of the technology and/or the concept as a hole – all being lost/not raised due to the obsession the majority of football fans who actively raise their voices in dissent have with the "impacting how I celebrate goals" issue. That issue is a non-starter for FA's and other Footballing organizations, due to the variety of reasons I've already raised several times, which in turn only make the complaints act as the perfect smokescreen for VAR to not actually be put under any public scrutiny/criticisms holding water. During the last EC we even saw it play out in the media, as the clicks/views from enraged fans complaining about referee/VAR decisions got their flames fanned by clickbait-articles and VAR-specific debates on TV – rather than any of the experts just calmly pointing out the fact that the referees/VAR were making correct calls and was being utilized properly, just that FIFA/IFAB had made horrid adjustments to the Laws of the Game two-three weeks ahead of the EC and nobody knew about the alterations made yet. In an ideal world, the outrage would have been about the unnecessary, dumb, changes to the Laws of the Game – getting them successfully overturned to what they used to be – instead of FIFA/IFAB getting away with it, all thanks to their beloved smokescreen, VAR. I have many things against VAR and how it's being implemented/utilized, and as I've already said, I'd back a motion to stop using it until such a time when the technology was already close to perfect prior to its implementation – rather than it being developed in use. Much like the NFL did when their first attempt at video refereeing failed, they didn't "force it through" claiming it being in use was what would remedy its many existing flaws. They put it on the shelf until the providers offering the service had a product that worked as advertised. In that sense, I'm way more anti-VAR than I am pro-VAR, at present. I'm just beyond frustrated and annoyed by the fact the majority of people who could actively be making a difference are choosing to focus on something that isn't even a thing, but something they've made themselves do based on their own thoughts about the mere existence of something. Instead, we're just letting FIFA keep on keeping on and accepting it, because not complaining about tangible real things and having those complaints amplified by the media won't bring about any actual change. The fact there's not even a universal rulebook for referees on how to utilize and implement VAR into their refereeing is disgraceful. Currently, it is up to each individual nation's FA's to instruct their referees on how to utilize and implement VAR into their game – which is very visible when watching any European game, as referees from different nation have different "instructions" on how to use VAR, leading to outrage amongst fans of a team from a nation where their referees utilize VAR completely different than the refs in the game they're watching does.

AI will inevitably remove many professions we know today, if that's the case for referees then that's the case for referees. I don't see what point you're making, as that's not the case at present. Being a professional referee in sports is an ungrateful job, you'll be abused for any and all mistakes you make (and it's human to make mistakes), yet receive no credit for all the correct decisions you make. Please continue your passive aggressive commentary. Again, there's tons of actual, credible arguments against VAR. These are being raised for discussion quite often by professionals involved in the development of the sport, though very often without any supporter input. Mainly because supporters can't wrap their heads around actual issues with the technology and its implementation and would rather focus on non-existant issues they've gaslit themselves into believing exist, and these issues naturally add no value to genuine discussion about any challenges related to VAR-use and implementation. Pierluigi Collina recently did an interview where he acknowledged legitimate issues related to VAR, as well as what is being done to improve these. I'd recommend people went and read it as it offers some genuine insight into VAR as a technology and what it actually does, which is a massive amount more than what little you witness watching a game live or on TV. He also stated that the end goal for VAR use isn't "shorter amounts of time spent making a decision", it's "no breaks in play". It's a work in progress and through practical implementation and usage it's a technology that has improved with each season it's been used. An argument could be made for it having been implemented into professional football "too early" in its development, as well as how the lack of universal rules for how referees are to make use of it varying between each individual nation's FA's. It's an argument I mostly agree with, as well, as I believe VAR's introduction to the game at a professional level was far too rushed and had a too short period, and sample size, of practical tests before implementation. We are where we are now though, and I've even witness the first tournament played of professional football where I had zero complaints about the officiating (EC 2024) from start to finish, and I expect many more will follow. I did have complaints about the new shitty Rules of the Game update implemented just days before the EC kicked off, though.

Did anyone on here even flinch at the news the chances of Earth being struck by a meteor in 2032 had risen as high as 3.2%, or did everyone just brush it off and go about life as normal given the fact they knew the chances that it'd happen were so low that it shouldn't, logically and sensibly, have any effect on their lives on a day to day basis? The chances of VAR overturning a goal is 1/4th lower than the chance of that meteorite hitting earth. Sure, given a large enough sample size you'll find that it does happen – but should it in any way effect your life on a day to day basis? Fuck no. If you no longer celebrate goals like you used to because VAR is a thing, I expect you quiver in fear daily given the fact you "know" Earth is getting struck by a meteor in just 7 years, because for every 100 times that meteor passes Earth, it will hit Earth 25% more often than VAR overturns a goal per 100 goals scored. Just because there's fewer meteorites with that chance of impacting Earth passing us than there is goals scored in professional football doesn't mean it's not more dumb to no longer celebrate goals like you used to than it'd be to prepare for a meteor impact in 2032 and have that negatively impact your life. Like fuck am I going to not celebrate Newcastle scoring a goal. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for me to not celebrate one.

Before VAR, would you have said the following; "I barely celebrate a goal now, it's always in the back of your mind that some dweeb with a flag on the touchline might raise it and chalk it off" instead? If not, you not celebrating a goal anymore isn't VAR's fault. It's completely your own doing. The fact the VAR-moaners moan about it when you can look at concrete statistical evidence disproving their reason for moaning? That's what annoys me to no end, not that someone points out that "VAR isn't perfect", "VAR is a work in progress" or "we need to make VAR better" – these are all valid arguments, even as an argument for an anti-VAR standpoint. I have time for people who'd argue that VAR should be shelved until enough work had been done on it for it to function perfectly before re-introducing it to the game, similar to how the NFL shelved their video ref effort in the late 80s/early 90s for almost a decade until technology had caught up with expectations for it's efficiency. Because, again, these are valid arguments based on more than opposing how a concept makes a person convince themselves of something untrue, entirely on their own by their own hand. There are many reasonable and valid critiques of VAR as a concept, as well as it's use and effectiveness and the implications those have on a wholesale basis for the game of football. If the anti-VAR lot focused more on actually making reasonable arguments against VAR that were based on reason and empirical statistic evidence, they'd have better luck than they do claiming VAR is to blame for what they're doing to themselves for no reason whatsoever.

That's my bad, went back after your post to check and realized I had missed the overall context of this bit: "At the beginning of the 2019-2020 season" FWIW, after 23/24 matches this season, we'd have been 8 points off CL spot, Arsenal would be top and Man Utd would be 4 points behind us in 10th. Even though our opinion would obviously be biased, I'd find it hard to argue against VAR having been a positive for us this season.

The only thing I can't comprehend is that YouGov, which I believed was a serious pollster, has published a poll using a sample size of 531 individuals – below their own threshold for how many individuals needing to be polled for a poll to reflect a realistic sample size (1000 individuals). Here's a more recent poll (yours was from 2019) utilizing a proper sample size of individuals polled: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13433701/Fans-VAR-result-poll-technology.html

All that said, the only thing that genuinely matter when it comes to whether or not VAR should be used or not is this; do the referees want it? Given that the answer to that question is a pretty much universel "yes", everyone else should shut the fuck up about it as it doesn't have any effect on their jobs and is making an already incredibly stressful and unthankful job done by other people, better. The name of this thread is a perfect example of how unthankful the job of being a professional referee is.

And I showed empirical statistical evidence why those people are certified idiots that doesn't understand that whatever is impacting their celebrations negatively is 100% their own fault, as there is no basis for it other than their own opinions. And yes, looking up the VAR stats on ESPN for the 23/24 season one the one dedicated page and then doing four quick calculations on a calculator app takes considerably less time than looking up annual FA VAR reports from multiple FA's across and then finding that specific section in the 100+ pages just to directly link you to it. Especially when the Norwegian VAR vote today was an opinion poll in itself, as the clubs at the FA meeting voted on behalf of their members. I'd say most members of a club would be considered probable match-going supporters, and these in turn voted during their club's annual meeting on whether or not to support VAR; 72% voted in favor of VAR. The result was met by rambunctious applause when announced. Coaches, referees, players, supporter alliance leaders and pundits have praised Norwegian football supporters for their now proven ability to "use common sense". Here's a link to that: https://www.vg.no/sport/i/Pp20p6/klaveness-med-melding-til-fotball-norge-gjoer-meg-bekymret If people just owned up to the fact they're being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, for the sake have something to moan and complain about or because they can't cope with change – I'd at least respect them. The fucking "can't celebrate like I used to" argument is so incomprehensibly idiotic it's almost reaching Ashley-ownership levels when it comes to something putting me off football as a whole.

Read your FA's annual VAR report, as well as other nations annual VAR reports. I'm not going to spend time looking up each individual reference to this. I'm, instead, going to explain by use of example how anyone "no longer celebrating goals like they used to" needs to check themselves before they wreck theirselves: 1246 goals were scored across 380 Premier League games in the 2023/24 season 50 goals were overturned by VAR This means that there was a 96.14% probability that a goal scored, is a goal scored, and that on average you'd have to celebrate 25 goals before experiencing celebrating "in vain" due to VAR interference. 82 goals were scored across 38 Premier League games by NUFC in the 2023/24 season 2 goals were overturned by VAR This means that there was a 97.61% probability that a goal scored, is a goal scored, and that on average you'd have to celebrate 42 goals before experiencing celebrating "in vain" due to VAR interference. Opposing VAR and saying it "ruins" the experience for fans celebrating goals has always been, and will always be, completely idiotic and without reason or logic. When the ball crosses the goalline, you can assume it's a goal and celebrate like it's a goal – until a time when you're being told it wasn't, just as was the case when "goals" were overturned using the eyes of a linesman placed, at best, 28.5 metres away from the goal line – or the eyes of a referee trying to see it happen in action (including any infractions committed by players) – without the use of precise video technology. If anything, from a statistical standpoint, withholding goal celebrations made more sense before VAR was ever introduced.

There's been untold amounts of polling done among matchgoing fans in multiple nations that say it is, though. That it may not be the case for a select few individuals may very well be the case, but it's not the case for the majority.

VAR to remain won the vote by over two thirds of the vote. We've had some very loud idiots people make noise about VAR "ruining" the experience as a fan watching matches, where (as is most often the case) the majority of people who's not against something have kept silent because they don't have anything to shout about. In the end, the idiots people against VAR managed to shout loudly enough to get this vote to happen. There, as was always the case, their uninformed and unreasoned arguments against VAR got voted down by the majority, because the majority of Norwegians (for now, at least) aren't idiots people with shit views. VAR makes the game fairer than without VAR, as an Englishman, there should be a natural instinct within your very being that triggers an intense support of VAR whenever you're shown the below image: The main argument of the idiots people that oppose VAR is that it, somehow, removes the joy of "immediate celebration" after a goal. VAR has been a thing for years now, people haven't stopped celebrating goals the second the ball looks like it's crossed the line. On average, a VAR check doesn't take much longer than 20 seconds when compared to ref-team discussions regarding potentially disallowing a goal or overturning a yellow/red card, or any other on-field decisions by the main referee that upon closer inspection should've/could've been overturned. Not to mention the fact the argument falls apart already at the first hurdle given the fact offside flags exist, and that they've had a tendency to be lifted after the ball has entered the goal. The opposition to VAR only exist because idiots people in general vehemently oppose "change" as a concept, even when it's objectively improving what it's changed. The very same idiots people are the kind of idiots people that will complain if anything they're familiar with changes.

In case anyone actually needed this reality check, the difference in fixture run-in for each of the clubs involved in the race for the European spots is, you know, pretty much ineligible. All 20 clubs play the other 19 clubs twice, home and away, across an entire season. That said, seeing what I've always said as visualised stats made my heart grow three sizes: That said, in the event that the run-in fixture nerds' are in the right and I'm in the wrong, they should be happy to see Fulham, Villa and Chelsea have "worse" run-ins in their fixtures than we do. On the other hand, Forest and Bournemouth have relatively much "easier" run-ins, with Brighton being just about on-par with us.

My current health situation sadly means I have to be a no-show for this, here's hoping I recover quick enough to be able to attend the eventual FA Cup Final meet @BlazeT44 feel free to hand my spot x1 to whoever's next on the waiting list, and cheers for organising 🙏🏼 Hopefully will make the next one!

"Media" will get tickets from their contact points at the club to cover matches they'd like to cover. I've put "Media" in quotation marks as it doesn't mean the same thing it once did (TV/Radio/Journalists), but now includes influencers, bloggers and more.

Oh, and an English club winning one of the European compeitions doesn't subtract a spot from the English league spots. There's dedicated "Defending Champion/Champion of the League Below" spots for CL/EL/ECL winners now.

5 CL, 2 EL and 1 ECL. No idea how the cups affect EL/ECL.

England will get 5 CL spots next season.

Didn't he end up being the President of the Spanish FA for some time until going down in that sex pest scandal?

Just saw that Cannes, playing in the French 4th tier, qualified for the Semis of the Coupe de France yesterday! Love a good underdog story, me Hope they avoid PSG in the Semis and get to the final.

Seems like it wasn't the implication, though

That's a great site, bookmarked!

You do know that the only person senior to Yasir in the PIF is Bin-Salman, right? Or was that the implication?