Video Assistant Referees (VAR)

[Guest]

Hilarious seeing all the journalists and ex-players who were avidly in favour of it backpedaling like fuck.

 

Football's Brexit. You'll not be able to find a single person who admits ever being in favour of it by the end of the season.

 

I find it hilarious seeing the likes of Lineker whinging about it. He says while working for BT Sport who have a referee in the studio every match micro analysing every decision, and MOTD with their super slo-motion replays from 80 different camera angles and lines with shaded areas showing the offside line proving a referee gets a call wrong. Maybe they could do away with this first. It’s part of the reason VAR came into the game in the first place.

[jdckelly]

Hilarious seeing all the journalists and ex-players who were avidly in favour of it backpedaling like fuck.

 

Football's Brexit. You'll not be able to find a single person who admits ever being in favour of it by the end of the season.

 

I find it hilarious seeing the likes of Lineker whinging about it. He says while working for BT Sport who have a referee in the studio every match micro analysing every decision, and MOTD with their super slo-motion replays from 80 different camera angles and lines with shaded areas showing the offside line proving a referee gets a call wrong. Maybe they could do away with this first. It’s part of the reason VAR came into the game in the first place.

what brought it in was basically every manager everywhere using the refs as an excuse whenever results didn't go their way

[ohmelads]

I think Liverpool will go the season unbeaten, but not in the way Arsenal did. Virtually every time they've been in danger this season, the VAR has come to their rescue. Look at all their toughest, closest games this season and the controversial decisions that have gone their way in each of them. At times they've been amazing, and they are a great side, but they've also been poor in quite a few games and could and should have drawn or lost them. Today is just another to the list and they've thoroughly earned the name Li-Var-pool.

 

Is the game bent? I don't know. We know that FIFA are (Qatar etc). The fact is some of the richest people in the world are involved in football now. We only know what we see on the pitch and it's dodgy.

[Segun Oluwaniyi]

The offside rule is a joke with or without VAR. To the letter of the law, the sorts of offsides like Pukki as well are offside, it shouldn’t be.

It is not a "joke". It is a law designed to be interpreted by human eyes that is now being taken to the finest margins possible with highly questionable technology and methodology. The margins are far too small for the technology being used, so the solution is either to improve the technology/methodology or decrease the margin.

 

I am genuinely stunned at how terrible VAR has been in the Premier League. It is markedly inferior to when it debuted on the biggest stage at the World Cup, and I was not fond of it at that time, either.

[Guest]

How on Earth are the human eyes supposed to be able to pick up on what the rules are ffs.

[jdckelly]

oh you know what he meant, the law was written to prevent teams just having a big lump hanging around the opposition goalkeeper all the time and was written with the intention of the offside being judged by human eyes not analysed frame by frame to see if someones toenail was offside

[triggs]

I do think that argument is also a bit shit mind. The rule was obviously first there to prevent goal hanging but now the whole basis of defending in football is based around the offside rule

[Tsunami]

How about the part of the body you score with has to be offside? Seems fair and would stop a lot of the issues.

[triggs]

Have mentioned this loads but they should just get the ref to go to the screen and if it's not clearly offside by eye then give it

[AY]

The offside rule is a joke with or without VAR. To the letter of the law, the sorts of offsides like Pukki as well are offside, it shouldn’t be.

It is not a "joke". It is a law designed to be interpreted by human eyes that is now being taken to the finest margins possible with highly questionable technology and methodology. The margins are far too small for the technology being used, so the solution is either to improve the technology/methodology or decrease the margin.

 

I am genuinely stunned at how terrible VAR has been in the Premier League. It is markedly inferior to when it debuted on the biggest stage at the World Cup, and I was not fond of it at that time, either.

 

Should just be a still photo for VAR-ref, no lines being drawn, he decides from that if there is a clear offside, if not, the goal stands.

[Guest]

Jake Humphreys the latest to pull VAR up. He literally presents matches where every little controversial decision they discuss with a retired referee locked up in some studio where they review umpteen angles, in slow motion, using their fancy graphics, etc. Maybe if they hadn’t been doing this more and more progressively over the past couple of decades in particular then the governing bodies mightn’t have seen the need to try and come up with the technology to try and keep up with them and get the decisions correct that they pull apart week-in, week-out? They’ve helped create this beast and yet the likes of him & Lineker don’t like it.

[Nobody]

an alternative to binning var since too many people in positions of power in football have too much invested in it to allow it to fail is a 30 second timer, if VAR can't make a decision on offsides inside 30 seconds tough shit on field decision stands

It seriously needs to be like 5-10 seconds. That's how quick you can judge if it's clear and obvious. No super slow mo replays, just the incident from a couple of different angles. No clear call on what happened? Well then a clear and obvious error hasn't occurred, original decision stands. It would also force the refs and linesmen to actually ref the game and not just rely on VAR.

[LV]

VAR would be fine for a game played by robots or AI but this is a game played, watched and loved by humans. It’s taken the humanity out of the game.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Could you have it where there has to be a clear gap between attacker and defender for offside? Kind of build the advantage to the attacker into the basic rule.

[Guest]

Not sure if it’s still a feature, but SSN had/have a 30 minute feature every Monday morning where Dermot Gallagher & an ex-footballer (someone shit like Stephen Warnock) go through every single controversial decision from the weekend going through everything with a fine tooth comb. No wonder technology was brought in to try and stop the incorrect decisions.

[The Prophet]

I'm still broadly in favour of the technology, it's just the ridiculous way in which it's being used, borderline offside calls being the worst of the bunch. As many have said it should be a clear and obvious error, if you're having to take six minutes to make a decision or you're getting the rulers out, it isn't clear and obvious.

 

The biggest problem for me is the shitty officiating, it's a multi-billion dollar sport with pound land referees. If you give poor officials technology, they're just poor officials with a laptop and a replay to hand.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I don’t really believe officials are poor, the percentage of correct decisions is incredibly high.

[triggs]

I don’t really believe officials are poor, the percentage of correct decisions is incredibly high.

Aye its really hard to be a ref. Linesman is just an impossible job really

 

My one issue with changing the offside rule would be that I think it would make teams defend a lot deeper than they currently do

 

Thinking back to the World Cup it seemed like offsides weren't really an issue with VAR but not sure if I've just forgotten. Also considering the amount of money in the PL shouldn't there be an easier way of determining offside than doing some maths on a screen?

[Stottie]

 

Fucking hell

 

Play it back once, call it inconclusive, and get on with the game. With cricket, doesn't half the ball have to be hitting the stumps for them to overturn? That's 4cm of leeway. It doesn't matter if part of the ball was hitting. The batsman stays in.

 

[Wullie]

I think the lines on the screen are meant to inform the viewer what is happening but that's actually the biggest problem with it as it stands. Elsewhere in Europe you just see the freeze frame and then you get the decision. It allows leeway for the referee in the booth to give an onside decision where it is too tight to call without looking at individual pixels. Once you've put those ridiculous lines on the screen, you're giving the viewer too much information.

[Yorkie]

I think the lines on the screen are meant to inform the viewer what is happening but that's actually the biggest problem with it as it stands. Elsewhere in Europe you just see the freeze frame and then you get the decision. It allows leeway for the referee in the booth to give an onside decision where it is too tight to call without looking at individual pixels. Once you've put those ridiculous lines on the screen, you're giving the viewer too much information.

 

Presumably they don't give out that level of information in the Bundesliga, where we're told VAR works fine?

[Guest]

Wasn’t even reviewed for the ‘assist for the assist’.

 

[David Edgar]

"Inconclusive evidence."

[morla84]

Unfortunately think we're stuck with it as it is until the end of the season. Would be unfair on teams that have had goals disallowed to change it at this stage

[Happinesstan]

"Inconclusive evidence."

 

That picture isn't conclusive.