Dogawful Officiating

[Benwell Lad]

As a veteran of the Trelford Mills game and someone who has felt for some time that English referees are worse than other major European leagues, Saturday's display was beyond any previous comparison, just pitifully incompetent and embarrassing. This was supposedly a top level referee from the world's best league, not some overweight geriatric in a Sunday morning game though you'd have struggled to tell the difference. Not corrupt in any way, you couldn't make corruption so transparent and expect to get away with it.

 

That is where it differs from many of the Madley displays when refereeing Newcastle games. He is just plain bent against us but would never be so stupid to make it that obvious. With him (or previously his brother) it's much more nuanced and guarded against obvious bias.

He'll give us a free kick or two, book an opposition player and even bigger decisions early on but it is nailed on that when the game changing decision comes along he'll go against us. Ignoring fouls and cheating, allowing time wasting and disruption, blowing up as we break dangerously, all much more subtle, opaque and difficult to prove definitively but inevitably directed against us.

Pitiful, embarrassing incompetence is easy to spot, Madley's type of cheating much less so.

[Benwell Lad]

15 hours ago, Kilcline said:

Nothing is going to change with VAR until, for starters, there's a clear definition of what "clear and obvious" actually means or there's a specific metric attached.

 

"This didn't meet the bar for intervention" is a good one, what the fuck does that mean?

 

Weasel words of the highest order written by officials, for officials to hide behind, to the detriment of the game.

 

Introduce the "daylight" ruling into offsides and VAR can start to function as it was intended and eliminate most of the protracted delays.

[Groundhog63]

Unless the players called the ref a cheating c••• & threatened to torch his letterbox, I'm not sure why the red 🤔

 

 

 

[ikri]

56 minutes ago, Troll said:

We can't be far away from just replacing all the referees with AI.

 

Since machine learning is just really good pattern matching it would be a good use case for refereeing. You'd probably need a camera for every player though which would make it expensive initially.

[Lush Vlad]

1 hour ago, Kilcline said:

Yeah, something based on time is where I'd generally be at, simple to implement and easy to understand, which of course means it won't happen 

 

Yep.  I agree with this.

 

I suppose it will still cause controversy in a different way.  As they'll pore back over it in the studio and show that techincally, the wrong decision was made.  Then everyone will cry and say they were hard done by. 

 

But taking even a minute to try and confirm whether it is offside or not is too long.  We seem to regularly get ones that take 2, 3, 4 minutes.  Maybe even longer.  

 

Nobody can look at the Casemiro and Willock ones from Wednesday night and say that is good for football.  

 

If you are having to study it to the nth degree and you're still not sure, because of tolerances (that Wirtz one ) and whatever else.  Then it shouldn't be ruled out and they shouldn't be spending so long looking at it over and over.

[Dr Venkman]

Give coaches 1 or 2 challenges per game. Challenges have to be very specific i.e. that handball was inside the box, not looking at the entire build up to a goal to try to find a reason to rule it out. On-field refs aren’t involved in the VAR decision at all, VAR look at it and decide themselves based on all of the information at hand. 
 

No clear and obvious nonsense, just look at the incident and make a judgement either way.

 

Or, to help avoid games like the Villa one, each team can make one challenge, but if they win the challenge they keep it. So you can basically challenge anything until you get it wrong, then you’re done.

 

Those issues can be worked out in time. The bit they absolutely must move away from is involving the on field ref and this ‘high bar’, ‘clear and obvious’ shite. It’s based on the premise that the ref can’t be wrong, which undermines the entire thing.

 

 

Edited February 16 by Dr Venkman

[joeyt]

Challenges would be used to tactically slow the game down. 

 

Not sure why we're trying to reinvent the wheel when football wasn't broken in the first place before VAR

[joeyt]

I think it comes down to what you prefer:

 

1) A football game without VAR and you accept human error. The fans are the back bone of the game and making them second guess decisions is diluting the sport so this would remove that 

 

2) A football game with VAR which probably gets more accurate decisions (although most are still subjective) but completely ruins the spectacle and emotions that made the game the force it is

 

 

Obviously I'm very much in favour of the first (and always have been) but the decision makers and business men are always going to go for the second one

[huss9]

just stick a 60 second limit on decisions and remove lines from offside.

[bobbydazzla]

[Kilcline]

11 minutes ago, huss9 said:

just stick a 60 second limit on decisions and remove lines from offside.

I think there's talk of introducing a 15-second rule or something for throw-ins so it could easily be aligned to that (or whatever the average time between the ball going out of play and play restarting is) and then you almost entirely remove any disruption to the game, as any checks are happening in the "dead" time anyway. Obviously the imperfection is if the ref then needs to go and have a look, but at least they've got to that point after X seconds rather than a few minutes.

 

All they'd have to manage is the actual sticking to the time, no "this player is badly injured and is receiving treatment on the pitch, we have a bit longer so we'll keep looking" nonsense

[Interpolic]

9 minutes ago, joeyt said:

I think it comes down to what you prefer:

 

1) A football game without VAR and you accept human error. The fans are the back bone of the game and making them second guess decisions is diluting the sport so this would remove that 

 

2) A football game with VAR which probably gets more accurate decisions (although most are still subjective) but completely ruins the spectacle and emotions that made the game the force it is

 

 

Obviously I'm very much in favour of the first (and always have been) but the decision makers and business men are always going to go for the second one

 

My preference is somewhere in the middle, keeping VAR but working out how to make it less intrusive. 

 

I wouldn't be happy going back to getting way more even basic decisions incorrect, especially because I'm convinced that unconscious bias towards the big sides with abusive managers is likely far more prominent without VAR. 

 

Whether that's correct or not I don't know but it certainly felt that way pre-VAR. 

[Dr Venkman]

36 minutes ago, joeyt said:

Challenges would be used to tactically slow the game down. 

 

Not sure why we're trying to reinvent the wheel when football wasn't broken in the first place before VAR

 

Aye but if you only get 1, so what? You only get more than 1 if the decision was wrong.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I don’t really like challenges on the principle that the point should be to get as many decisions right as possible. But almost willing to try anything at this point. 

[Mike]

1 hour ago, Groundhog63 said:

Unless the players called the ref a cheating c••• & threatened to torch his letterbox, I'm not sure why the red 🤔

 

 

 

 

That's got to be that refs letter of resignation because what the fuck?

[Groundhog63]

2 minutes ago, Mike said:

 

That's got to be that refs letter of resignation because what the fuck?

Like I say, unless he's wired up and we can hear some outrageous abuse directed his way, the ref has to explain himself. Even then you'd be forgiven for asking what's his usual tolerance and what's that based on?

Wasn't even a foul.

[CallumG6]

Refereeing has to be the only industry (except politics) where you can fuck up over and over again, without consequence.

 

Imagine being shite at your job, and your employer just constantly defends you in high level meetings, wouldn’t happen.

[Yorkie]

23 minutes ago, Interpolic said:

My preference is somewhere in the middle, keeping VAR but working out how to make it less intrusive. 

 

I wouldn't be happy going back to getting way more even basic decisions incorrect, especially because I'm convinced that unconscious bias towards the big sides with abusive managers is likely far more prominent without VAR. 

 

Whether that's correct or not I don't know but it certainly felt that way pre-VAR. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/07/world-cup-players-to-have-lifelike-ai-avatars-for-use-in-var-offside-decisions

 

Suffice to say the lawmakers don't really vibe with the idea that VAR becomes less of a thing.

 

Just feels like we're all shouting into the void. Talk of time limits, challenges, removing it from offsides, abolishing it altogether - we're all just shouting into the void. We might as well be discussing abolishing goalposts. 

[Interpolic]

1 minute ago, Yorkie said:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/07/world-cup-players-to-have-lifelike-ai-avatars-for-use-in-var-offside-decisions

 

Suffice to say the lawmakers don't really vibe with the idea that VAR becomes less of a thing.

 

Just feels like we're all shouting into the void. Talk of time limits, challenges, removing it from offsides, abolishing it altogether - we're all just shouting into the void. We might as well be discussing abolishing goalposts. 

 

Yeah we are tbh. Remember that VAR was brought in almost overnight with zero fan consultation, after decades of discussion about it with the most common conclusion usually that it wouldn't work in a game so fluent. 

 

I'm still somehow "for it" after the first few years but the scope and implementation of it leaves a lot to be desired. 

[Mike]

8 minutes ago, Groundhog63 said:

Like I say, unless he's wired up and we can hear some outrageous abuse directed his way, the ref has to explain himself. Even then you'd be forgiven for asking what's his usual tolerance and what's that based on?

Wasn't even a foul.

 

It didn't even look like the lad had a chance to say much of anything at all. No accountability for these twats.

[Groundhog63]

6 minutes ago, Mike said:

 

It didn't even look like the lad had a chance to say much of anything at all. No accountability for these twats.

 

Well, in another X post, that I tried to embed here but didn't graft, the player has called the ref out himself. I guess more will be made of it. Hopefully the ref didn't just decide he wasn't taking any grief off of a black lad. We'll see.

[Colos Short and Curlies]

Id make sure that only the referee can make a judgment either way, no swaying of opinion by VAR.

 

2 replays in real time, if that suggests something has been missed send them to the screen. If they can’t make that call after 2 views the refs decision stands.

 

there should also be a mandate that any decision has to made based on what they would have given if they had seen the incident at game speed, no freeze framing

[Mike]

22 minutes ago, Groundhog63 said:

 

Well, in another X post, that I tried to embed here but didn't graft, the player has called the ref out himself. I guess more will be made of it. Hopefully the ref didn't just decide he wasn't taking any grief off of a black lad. We'll see.

 

Nah that one embedded as well. It's Italy so I wouldn't be shocked.

[Pokerprince2004]

Just seen a discussion on sky regarding the bad decisions at Villa park, basically saying there were 4 big errors. Offside goal, handball in the box, Murphy tackle but surprisingly they said that Tonalis equaliser should have been disallowed as Burn was offside?! Literally first I'd heard about that one not seen it mentioned anywhere 

[Wilson]

14 minutes ago, Pokerprince2004 said:

Just seen a discussion on sky regarding the bad decisions at Villa park, basically saying there were 4 big errors. Offside goal, handball in the box, Murphy tackle but surprisingly they said that Tonalis equaliser should have been disallowed as Burn was offside?! Literally first I'd heard about that one not seen it mentioned anywhere 

 

My fist would have been firmly through the telly had that happened. 

 

Thankfully there was zero chance of them officials picking up on anything like that. 

 

 

Edited February 16 by Wilson