No More Sarri - Premier League 2019/20

[Nocturnal Submission]

Thanks for the article from the Athletic, UA. Interesting, though it made my brain hurt slightly. It seems to boil down to the suggestion that stills released of offside incidents could well be misleading which is rather unsatisfactory!

The way that football and rugby employ VAR is frequently being compared, but it occurs to me that I've yet to see lines on a screen proving or disproving a forward pass in the latter game.

[Ray de Galles]

Lines along the pitch wouldn't help judge forward passes in rugby, in fact they could distort decisions ;

[Janik]

Because they wouldn't work! A pass can go forwards relative to the pitch and not be a forward pass. It's all to do with vectors and inertial frames. Seriously.

And you thought Football's rules are troublesome...

[Nocturnal Submission]

Yeh, my poorly-made point was more that rugby doesn't try to judge things to such a fine degree of precision and that, if you try to, you lay yourself open to the accusation that the current technology, allied to the mechanics of an offside ruling, specifically the point at which a pass has been "made," isn't able to provide definitive evidence when tolerance levels are down to millimetres.

[ursus arctos]

It isn't just attempting to judge a fast moving game played on a large field to a great degree of precision, it is that the way the decisions are presented to the television audience (supposedly in order to make them more accessible/entertaining) actually destroys and distorts what precision the system is able to provide.

Again, this is primarily/exclusively a Premier League issue, because of the ways they have chosen to implement the protocols.

I also read yesterday that Premier League officials are still insisting on a degree of "intentionality" in hand balls, and have not fully adopted the "unnatural position" standard (that being offered as an explanation of the non-call before Liverpool's first goal yesterday).

[Janik]

Yeh, my poorly-made point was more that rugby doesn't try to judge things to such a fine degree of precision and that, if you try to, you lay yourself open to the accusation that the current technology, allied to the mechanics of an offside ruling, specifically the point at which a pass has been "made," isn't able to provide definitive evidence when tolerance levels are down to millimetres.

It's not that Rugby isn't doing things to such a fine level of precision, though. It's not that the forward pass is not forward enough or that there are shades of grey. It's that the passers forward vector has to be taken into consideration. The pass only needs to be backwards with respect to that, not to the pitch. And actually, that could be displayed with moving sets of gridlines and forward passes adjudged to the millimetre if people wanted to.

There is clearly an issue with the timing that a (Football) pass is made, though. The contact of an inflated bag of air and a foot is very much an elastic collision. It occupies a quite considerable length of time, large chunks of a second. Given the top speed of players is well over 5 metres per second, if a ball is in contact with a foot for 0.5 seconds and the two players are heading in opposite directions, then that is 5 whole meters of ground covered. Law 11 on offside uses the phrase "A player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched by a team-mate", which raises the issue that playing or touching a ball isn't a instant but a drawn out event. However, the laws do actually deal with that - it is the point in time where first contact is made that should be use - "The first point of contact of the 'play' or 'touch' of the ball should be used"

The recent one where the timing appeared to be out (was it involving Ajax?) is probably also down to a mix of that and the same issue The Athletic made that the 2d still image released to the public is rather less accurate than the 3d virtual reality frame that VAR actually uses to judge these things.

[Ray de Galles]

Did thar video I posted on forward passes upthread come through OK? I'm having problems seeing it but it may be the wi-fi where I am.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Did thar video I posted on forward passes upthread come through OK? I'm having problems seeing it but it may be the wi-fi where I am.

Yeh, it's fine.

[Satchmo Distel]

It isn't just attempting to judge a fast moving game played on a large field to a great degree of precision, it is that the way the decisions are presented to the television audience (supposedly in order to make them more accessible/entertaining) actually destroys and distorts what precision the system is able to provide.

Again, this is primarily/exclusively a Premier League issue, because of the ways they have chosen to implement the protocols.

I also read yesterday that Premier League officials are still insisting on a degree of "intentionality" in hand balls, and have not fully adopted the "unnatural position" standard (that being offered as an explanation of the non-call before Liverpool's first goal yesterday).

I think with "unnatural position" there ought to be some intent to be gaining an advantage by having your hand in such a position, rather than it being due to a slip or some other non-intentional movement. Yesterday the ball was pinging around and the defender had no idea the ball was coming his way until it was about to hit him. No evidence of intent to gain an advantage with his hand positioning.

[3 Colours Red]

I do think we need a universally-agreed body part to measure offsides with. It's no good drawing lines from armpits or toenails; we need to compare like with like. We should do what athletics does with photo finishes - measure from the torso.

Also... does anyone else think that the Premier League are deliberately gimping VAR in order to create more conversation about their "product"? It doesn't seem to be causing quite the same level of consternation in other major leagues in which it is being used.

And my final point - refs not looking at pitchside monitors. They already have a wearable device for goal-line technology; we already have small, high-resolution screens that can be worn on the wrist. Why not a smart watch VAR monitor?

[Snake Plissken]

I subscribe to Clarets Player because I have no alternative, but I almost put my foot through the monitor when after ruling out Woods goal on Saturday, the commentator started wittering on about "I don't think those lines they are drawing are parallel".

[Jah Womble]

Refs quite happy with VAR: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50380641

Although not sufficiently to be arsed enough to go and view the footage for themselves.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Looking at the TV monitor would take a lot of the heat out of the situation. A lot of the problems stem from the ref not looking at a monitor. The first thing they need to do is explain how they work out offsides, so people at least know that if the offside decision is taking a while, at least it will be accurate. But aside from that, it seems to consist of something happening, and then a two minute wait before the VAR plucks up the courage to say, "Carry on you were right". People are going to be better able to put up with the delay if the ref has trotted over to have a look in the screen, because the VAR man has told him that that incident looks very different from another angle. The Ref is actively doing something, and there's clearly something for him to see. The Ref standing around in the middle of the pitch for ages, seems to be at the root of a lot of the problems.

The thing is that I think that people kind of expect VAR to be like a higher all seeing level of justice, but for some reason the Premier league have chosen to use it like the Court of Appeal in the UK, where the judges aren't trying to decide if the original decision was right or wrong, just assessing whether or not the lower level judge made any clear and obvious mistakes in arriving to this decision. And usually they give the lower level judge the thumbs up. That's not how VAR is supposed to work and yet another example of the football culture of a country aping the underlying culture of the country with bizarre effects.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I'm really not sure how the ref looking at a pitchside monitor is going to help matters. A colleague looking at the incident dispassionately in a video suite away from the action would be able to better make an objective decision, I'd have thought.

The problem is inexplicable decisions (Guendouzi hauling back Soyuncu but no penalty given, for instance), people's disappointment and, slightly illogical, dissatisfaction with fractional offsides ruling out goals, a lack of clarity as to how long before a goal an infraction that negates it can occur and annoyance that offences in the lead up to goals can chalk them off when committed by the attacking team but not provide goalscoring chances when an attack is illegally interrupted by the defending team.

[Satchmo Distel]

Maybe offsides should have something like "umpire's call", where you allow a margin of uncertainty that errs on the side of the initial decision?

[ursus arctos]

I think that the Premier League is effectively applying such a standard without fully acknowledging it, which is the cause of much of the controversy.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think it should be in the hands of the managers. You get two reviews a game. If you ask for a review and it's not offside or a foul or whatever then you have lost a review. If you run out of reviews and you lose to an offside goal or a contentious penalty, well, you shouldn't have wasted your reviews then. You have 15 seconds after an incident to call a review - usually more than enough time after a goal or other incident.

[diggedy derek]

Janik – yes, a finite number of referrals to VAR would help a lot. As I was saying to my wife, in cricket, they roughly have one or two a _day_. In football it happens every ten or 15 minutes. And in cricket it feels to me a familiar and trusted part of the game now.

[Nocturnal Submission]

This has been doing the rounds on social media. I think I'm impressed, as some of the dosh goes to charitable causes, but it's still a bit shocking to see a disciplinary fine that's roughly equivalent to the average UK annual wage:

[Ek weet nie]

They need to update to clarify bullet point no 5 is for anti-doping purposes. I raised an eyebrow.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

What does that final bullet mean?

[ursus arctos]

It allows the club to have the requisite knowledge of players' "whereabouts" for anti-doping purposes.

[Nocturnal Submission]

They need to update to clarify bullet point no 5 is for anti-doping purposes. I raised an eyebrow.

Yes, I trust that's just a typo.That's what happens when you get Jody Morris to draw up a document for you.

What does that final bullet mean?

I presume that random anti-doping testing can take place at any time or place in the UK, within reason at least, so if a player is out of the country the club need to know that should the officials select them for their attention. Can't say I'm too hot on the mechanics of the process though.

[pebblethefish]

I'd imagine too that if off to, for example, Spain, they can tell you which local hangover cures are safe to use and which contain something on the banned list

[ursus arctos]

I'd actually be rather surprised if they do that, given the vast number of supplements that are available in various markets.

I also tend to think that Chelsea's current playing staff isn't anywhere near as inclined to go off on foreign benders as it was in Terry's day.