No More Sarri - Premier League 2019/20

[DCI Harry Batt]

I happened, unusually for me, to be driving a bit after six yesterday, and thought I'd catch up with the BBC radio football programme. Jesus. I mean, I know, but, Jesus. It's like a caricature of itself. It made me go all "my licence fee goes on this!".

VAR is an anti-human, anti-football bag of wank, for arsewipes. There's no point arguing about it though.

[3 Colours Red]

606 has been tabloid reactionary gammonface bollocks ever since Danny Baker left. They may as well stick it on TalkShite; you wouldn't be able to tell any difference.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Sure. I should have been prepared for it. But it was just so bad, as well as so awful.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Change the offside law. Change the handball law.

to what?

[EIM]

to what?

Something not fucking stupid.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

But the offside rule hasn't changed The only changes to the handball rule are don't wave your hands around in the box if you're a defender, and don't handle the ball if you intend to score a goal.

[EIM]

But the offside rule hasn't changed The only changes to the handball rule are don't wave your hands around in the box if you're a defender, and don't handle the ball if you intend to score a goal.

The offside rule may not have changed, but given how it's being applied in the age of VAR it needs to. The law was brought in to stop goal hanging. It was not brought in to penalise strikers whose big toe is offside. It's fucking ridiculous.

If you insist on using VAR, and you shouldn't because it's fucking wank, then change the rules so it's at least watchable.

[hobbes]

I think there's a need to look at other sports and how they use technology plus introduce a cricket or tennis style rule on the number of challenges. At the moment it appears that VAR is being used to rule out goals for minute reasons rather than as an aid to the referee.

That just makes it MORE needlessly complicated, rather than less.

I have to say, I’m horrified to find myself completely with Berbs here. Offside is offside and VAR is orders of magnitude more accurate than a lino, perhaps 80 yards away, running, while trying to watch four different players up to 100 yards apart.

if your argument is “make it less accurate,” then you obviously don’t care about the actual laws of the game at all. You may as well make the goals bigger, or allow goal hanging etc. Either way it’s nothing to do with VAR.
the issue with VAR is it’s too slow and the FA never explained it properly. The speed will improve over time.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

We now have a generation of quick young forwards who have spent their entire apprenticeships learning the art of making a split-second run off the shoulder of a defender onto a through ball, leaving the defence for dead and the crowd roaring at the chance created, up against a generation of defenders who have similarly been drilled to cleverly step up just in time to prevent that run. Not to mention the midfielders who've learnt to time, just so, that flick or pass. As a battle of timing, wit and craft, it's what makes modern football thrilling and beautiful to watch. And every single time it happens now in a match everyone has to hang about and wait for a decision.

[DCI Harry Batt]

But there really isn't any point in arguing with people who think "it's more accurate" is a winning or a persuasive argument. Same as there's no point in VARlovers arguing with people who think "it's more accurate" is a bag of wank argument.

We don't want the same things. So we won't agree on how to achieve them.

[San Bernardhinault]

TonTon is right. I don’t particularly care about 100% accuracy. I want a watchable, flowing game. I’d like decent accuracy but not past the point where it starts messing with the watchability.

Also, the rule I’m happiest with is “The Referee is right”. If the ref says it’s not offside, then it’s not offside even if some genius with a laser ranging device can show, 2 weeks later, that the striker’s chest hairs were in front of the bit off mud on the defender’s boot.

There are other people who want decisions to be as close to 100% accurate as possible - that the game
is worse when decisions are not strictly accurate. And are happy to sacrifice flow for precision. It’s a logically coherent position. It’s wrong, of course, but it’s no less coherent than the right position.

[EIM]

As a side issue, you're getting goals given or disallowed in the Premier League that would be disallowed or given in every other league in the country. How is that reasonable? They're either the laws or they're not.

[ursus arctos]

Also, the rule I’m happiest with is “The Referee is right”

Put a man in a town dominated by current and former military and he turns into an authoritarian apologist.

You hate to see it.

[Insert smiley thing]

I don't read EIM or anyone else as advocating a "less accurate" standard. On the contrary, I see the position as wanting to return to the rule's original motivation of penalising an unfair attempt to gain an advantage.

[caja-dglh]

I find the VAR offside does need some consideration for a rule change - probably with player feedback.

Right now the linesman only signals blatant offside - there is a incentive to back away from marginal calls, sending it to VAR if it ends up in a goal. My question would be whether the current rule makes it too challenging for a player to work out if they are onside or off. Would it be easier if it was based on just the foot for them to interpret? It may be that players are just working out how to play the rule (so VAR offside goals will reduce) or there is a better way to measure it so players can follow the rule (so offside VAR goals reduce).

[Jah Womble]

Change the offside law. Change the handball law.

Well yeah.

[ChrisJ]

I find the VAR offside does need some consideration for a rule change - probably with player feedback.

Right now the linesman only signals blatant offside - there is a incentive to back away from marginal calls, sending it to VAR if it ends up in a goal. My question would be whether the current rule makes it too challenging for a player to work out if they are onside or off. Would it be easier if it was based on just the foot for them to interpret? It may be that players are just working out how to play the rule (so VAR offside goals will reduce) or there is a better way to measure it so players can follow the rule (so offside VAR goals reduce).

I think players will adapt to the rule. Problem is, that for the attacking player that means hanging further and further back just in case a stray hair breaks the line. The benefit of the doubt is gone, the advantage is now to the defending side. That is VAR's fault because it was previously not possible, in real time, to make such minute calls. "Level" by eye was fine and we all knew it. When Linos got a call wrong, it was usually because they'd lost concentration or been distracted.

This is all the inevitable outcome of TV pundits having spent years screaming that "THESE DECISIONS MUST BE RIGHT EVERY TIME!! IT'S TOO IMPORTANT!!!!" The self-same people are now telling us it's ridiculous to stop a game, etc, etc. If only someone had said something....

And has it improved the standard of officiating? (Rhetorical question.)

[Tony C]

VAR is absolutely dominating football discussion on social media and has done for some time - much more than dubious refereeing decisions ever did.

I must seem desperately 'old school' but I detest VAR, never saw a real need or appetite for it and still think its findings are rather less absolute than some would have us believe.

[ursus arctos]

Some observers have suggested that the stark difference in the reaction to VAR between England and (say) Italy is largely due to starkly different beliefs about the quality and impartiality of refereeing decisions at the time of its introduction.

Whereas it has been a given among Italian football supporters for decades that the authorities are both grossly incompetent and (more importantly) biased (with the two-thirds of the country that does not support Juventus being united in their identification of the primary beneficiaries), that mentality had never taken hold in England to anything like a similar extent. In fact, English football media has consistently promoted belief in English officials as "the best in the world".

As a result, Italian supporters largely welcomed a more objective approach to what was recognised as a universal problem and were willing to live through the system's teething pains, while English supporters see VAR as an ill-conceived attempt to fix something that wasn't really broken and never gave the system a fair chance.

I don't fully buy it (the German supporter attitude towards VAR is much closer to Italy than England, yet German supporters' belief in systemic corruption is much closer to English levels), but it is an interesting take to consider.

[ChrisJ]

Some observers have suggested that the stark difference in the reaction to VAR between England and (say) Italy is largely due to starkly different beliefs about the quality and impartiality of refereeing decisions at the time of its introduction.

Whereas it has been a given among Italian football supporters for decades that the authorities are both grossly incompetent and (more importantly) biased (with the two-thirds of the country that does not support Juventus being united in their identification of the primary beneficiaries), that mentality had never taken hold in England to anything like a similar extent. In fact, English football media has consistently promoted belief in English officials as "the best in the world".

As a result, Italian supporters largely welcomed a more objective approach to what was recognised as a universal problem and were willing to live through the system's teething pains, while English supporters see VAR as an ill-conceived attempt to fix something that wasn't really broken and never gave the system a fair chance.

I don't fully buy it (the German supporter attitude towards VAR is much closer to Italy than England, yet German supporters' belief in systemic corruption is much closer to English levels), but it is an interesting take to consider.

I don't know whether there's a difference in degree, but there's been a consistent belief for many years, that BRCs get the benefit of every decision. I don't suppose you'd find many Wolves fans who'd agree that VAR has improved matters.

English football media has certainly promoted the belief that English officials are superior (along with Best Cup Final, Best League, Fairest Players, etc), but I'd hesitate to ascribe this one to English exceptionalism so much as a corner into which 'we' have painted ourselves with our bottomless craving for controversy and sensation as opposed to meaningful analysis of the game. (There's a certain irony that the same advances in technology have now reached the stage where TV pundits are finally able to communicate their insights on tactics and technical issues, but they're being drowned out by VAR bullshit.)

I'm with EIM. Change/simplify the laws. VAR has pushed both to their logical limits and in doing so has revealed their flaws. (So maybe it's performed one useful function?) But I'm increasingly grateful both for its absence from the 3rd Divison and the FF button on my remote.

[Diable Rouge]

Some observers have suggested that the stark difference in the reaction to VAR between England and (say) Italy is largely due to starkly different beliefs about the quality and impartiality of refereeing decisions at the time of its introduction.

Whereas it has been a given among Italian football supporters for decades that the authorities are both grossly incompetent and (more importantly) biased (with the two-thirds of the country that does not support Juventus being united in their identification of the primary beneficiaries), that mentality had never taken hold in England to anything like a similar extent. In fact, English football media has consistently promoted belief in English officials as "the best in the world".

As a result, Italian supporters largely welcomed a more objective approach to what was recognised as a universal problem and were willing to live through the system's teething pains, while English supporters see VAR as an ill-conceived attempt to fix something that wasn't really broken and never gave the system a fair chance.

I don't fully buy it (the German supporter attitude towards VAR is much closer to Italy than England, yet German supporters' belief in systemic corruption is much closer to English levels), but it is an interesting take to consider.

Likewise, the continental application of VAR, with referees running to the sideline, and multiple replays visible to both the TV audience and spectators within the stadium, simply appears far more transparent than the interpretation chosen by the Premier League.

[Sits]

That’s what they do on rugby league here. I don’t like it; I don’t like stoppages per se in games that need to flow. But if you’re going to do it, do it so everyone can see.

[scratchmonkey]

The question for me is whether people who want VAR gone would be okay with situations like Gosling's goal against Chelsea a few weeks back, where it was flagged offside, then VAR showed that it wasn't even close, with a Chelsea player putting him on by a good two yards, then giving a goal that gave a team struggling at the bottom of the table a well-needed win against a "big club" fighting for a top four spot. Is it worth going back to having those sorts of egregious mistakes to have goals like Pukki's (which was barely off, if at all) or Mousset's (which was off to my eyes, if only just) from yesterday allowed?

[elguapo4]

Gosling's goal was a pin up for VAR in that it was a "clear and OBVIOUS error ", someone's toe being a millimetre offside is not an obvious error.

[scratchmonkey]

I'd agree that VAR with offside should operate a lot more like how penalties under VAR have been handled so far in that only the most egregious errors get reviewed; however, most of the reactions to VAR aren't "the system needs some obvious tweaking" and more "the game's gone".

(IFAB did put out a press release recently reiterating the "clear and obvious" language re: offside, so we'll have to see if anything comes out of that.)

[hobbes]

But wherever you draw the line there will be an error bar that people will argue about. So you might as well make it 0.