No More Sarri - Premier League 2019/20

[caja-dglh]

I haven't seen the decision - just that for goals they aren't seeming to look for fouls in the build up. So I think unless it was a red card offense the referee missed it won't get called.

[G-Man]

Tottenham were quite lucky to get a draw at plucky mid-table Man Utd. Is Jürgen Klopp auditioning for a panto role?

[Snake Plissken]

I haven't seen the decision - just that for goals they aren't seeming to look for fouls in the build up. So I think unless it was a red card offense the referee missed it won't get called.

Burnley had an equaliser overturned for even less yesterday.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Tottenham were quite lucky to get a draw at plucky mid-table Man Utd.

That'll be news to them, given that they were at home to Watford, but I'm sure they'll take it.

[G-Man]

Oh, it wasn't Tottenham? The team that played Man Utd looked like Tottenham and played like them, too.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Don't give up the day job, comedy ain't your forte.

[G-Man]

Oh, don't be so bitter, Toby, even if you're still hurting from your side's failure to beat a team in 14th place, Toby?

[hobbes]

Unlike you to act the prick, G-Man. What gives?

[Toby Gymshorts]

Oh, don't be so bitter, Toby, even if you're still hurting from your side's failure to beat a team in 14th place, Toby?

We have some actual comedians who contribute who will no doubt tell you that if you have to explain your joke, it's not funny. Less so if you have to illustrate it.

Also: not bitter. What's the point in being bitter? It'd be as pointless as gloating over a draw.

[G-Man]

Where am I acting the prick? I made a gag about Liverpool's kit, and Toby responded with a rather mean-spirited post (Edit: two of them now). Whereupon I riffed on Man Utd's league position. Being a prick would have been to respond to Toby in kind.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Mean-spirited? More factual to my mind, abstract not-funny joke notwithstanding.

[G-Man]

I'm rather puzzled by your behaviour. If you don't like a joke, and that joke isn't offensive, why don't you just ignore it?

[Toby Gymshorts]

You know what? It's not a great idea to get involved in a pointless argument (read: be a chippy dickhead) when, in reality, it's other things in your life that are getting to you. It's a football match, it's inconsequential in the scheme of things.

I hope you'll accept my apology, G-man. I didn't intend to be mean-spirited, but I see now that I was. So: I'm sorry, and I apologise.

[G-Man]

Hey, we all have moments like that. All's cool.

[EIM]

Why is Klopp so scared of playing at Old Trafford? Two seasons in a row he's turned up with a better team and been too afraid to go for it.

Also. It was never a foul.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Also. It was never a foul.

Yeh, it was. Quite a hard kick to Origi's left shin.

[Janik]

VAR isn't being used to reassess foul / no foul decisions in these situations.

Isn't there something about fouls/non-fouls in build ups (excluding offside) having to be inside the box? Basically, VAR is not going to be use looking back to incidents on the halfway line, there is way too much water under the bridge for that. Decision made, move on, defend the next phase of play properly. See also Newcastle's complaints about a foul on Joelinton ~15 seconds before Chelsea scored yesterday.

What is clear, though, is VAR is being almost entirely on disallowing goals by attacks rather than catching unspotted fouls be defenders. And this is a really bad thing - it should be tipped the other way around.

Burnley had an equaliser overturned for even less yesterday.

This, for example. Under the current laws of the game, it was a foul. Sean Dyche's bleating on about the lack of intention on the part of Chris Wood may as well have been about the colour of the shirt Wood was wearing, because that is just as relevant under the current laws of the game, i.e. not at all. All references to intent have been deleted in recent years. The laws are now outcome-determinative ('Was the player tripped up?' Yes - no other considerations needed - foul). But comparing it to the Spurs-Watford one, when a defender has multiple goes at tripping up a forward until he finally succeeds, shows the difference. Both are fouls, both should be penalised. The one by the defender on the forward is much more blatant. The one by the forward on the defender is the one that got called.

One thing we have to be careful about is an inherent asymmetry VAR creates. A decision can only be reversed if the game wasn't stopped. Basically a foul not given can be corrected, but a foul mistakenly awarded cannot be undone. So refs, even when they are sure a foul has happened, do not whistle as they know by doing that they have the fall-back of reviewing afterwards with VAR. However, people haven't yet got their heads around this. They are still working on the assumption that, because the ref didn't whistle and stop the game, she didn't believe a foul was committed. Not so. In fact, potentially quite false; not whistling is exactly how the ref is meant to behave even if she has seen a foul in games with VAR. No inferences can therefore be drawn from whether she whistled or not as to what she believes the decision should have been.

We really, really could do with access to the conversations between the ref and the VAR booth, as they do in Rugby. In that sport you often hear exchanges along the lines of:-
"I saw that last pass as forward, can you run it back and check for me please?"
"Yep, forward as anything"
"Thanks, I'll give the scrum"

The exchange yesterday might have been:-
"I saw that as a trip by the forward on the defender but let it play out just in case - can you have a look?"
"Some contact. Calling it a trip is not a clear and obvious error. Stand by your call"
"Thanks. No goal, lads"

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

oh it definitely was a foul. He kicks him in the leg with no reference whatsoever to the ball. The problem is that the game was being reffed in real time by "SKY SUPER SUNDAY COMMON SENSE REAL MAN RULES." and origi's hilarious collapse was so hopelessly out of sync with the contact (He spun like he had been hit in the shoulder by the bumper of one of those monster trucks). Incidents like that that were happening all thoughout the game. The only think that is different about this one is that a couple of seconds later the ball was in the net, and suddenly people were looking back at it thinking that might have been a foul.

Here's the thing. I think that was a foul, and I think that VAR should have ruled it out. However those are not the rules, which are baiscally unless it's offside or handball, which are fairly definite things, VAR is not going to overrule the ref (unless you are burnley and you are in danger of ruining the special day that leicester city were putting on for their dead owner who was clearly granted his monopoly on duty free shops by a military dictatorship because he was such a good and decent person. also it's worth trying to find Brendan Rodgers post match tribute to yer man. I had to root out my dad's blood sugar tester to see if I had acquired type II diabetes from the sickly sweetness of it all)

Var needs to be allowed overrule the referee, or at the Very least be able to tell the referee to "go over and have a look at the screen, because I don't want to have to over-rule you, but Everyone is going to call me crooked as a corkscrew, and think you're a simpleton if you stick with this decision." But those are the stupid rules as they stand. Klopp spoke for far too long after the match. But he was talking at length about VAR in a way that would suggest to me, that the way it was explained to him before the start of the season, and the way it is currently being implemented are two very different things.

What Dyche is primarily complaining about is that the referee saw the incident and didn't give a free kick. VAR is not really supposed to overrule a referee under those circumstances. Except if you are burnley. For instance, I don't like the way that VAR won't overrule a ref, or strongly suggest that he might want to look at the monitor, and I think that if VAR was being implemented properly that man utd goal should have been ruled out. But I would have been absolutely fucking furious if they had changed those rules for 30 seconds in today's game.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Now Jermaine Jenas is on the TV becoming Vegan for a tv programme. He doesn't seem to have the first Idea what he is getting into. He is also telling us that he likes his food. I am very suspicious of any man in his mid 30's who looks like a 23 year old professional footballer, who fits in his his football career, around his second career as the cute one in an early noughties Urban boyband. let alone one who claims to 'like his food.'

[Nocturnal Submission]

oh it definitely was a foul. He kicks him in the leg with no reference whatsoever to the ball. The problem is that the game was being reffed in real time by "SKY SUPER SUNDAY COMMON SENSE REAL MAN RULES." and origi's hilarious collapse was so hopelessly out of sync with the contact (He spun like he had been hit in the shoulder by the bumper of one of those monster trucks). Incidents like that that were happening all thoughout the game. The only think that is different about this one is that a couple of seconds later the ball was in the net, and suddenly people were looking back at it thinking that might have been a foul.

Here's the thing. I think that was a foul, and I think that VAR should have ruled it out. However those are not the rules, which are baiscally unless it's offside or handball, which are fairly definite things, VAR is not going to overrule the ref (unless you are burnley and you are in danger of ruining the special day that leicester city were putting on for their dead owner who was clearly granted his monopoly on duty free shops by a military dictatorship because he was such a good and decent person. also it's worth trying to find Brendan Rodgers post match tribute to yer man. I had to root out my dad's blood sugar tester to see if I had acquired type II diabetes from the sickly sweetness of it all)

Var needs to be allowed overrule the referee, or at the Very least be able to tell the referee to "go over and have a look at the screen, because I don't want to have to over-rule you, but Everyone is going to call me crooked as a corkscrew, and think you're a simpleton if you stick with this decision." But those are the stupid rules as they stand. Klopp spoke for far too long after the match. But he was talking at length about VAR in a way that would suggest to me, that the way it was explained to him before the start of the season, and the way it is currently being implemented are two very different things.

What Dyche is primarily complaining about is that the referee saw the incident and didn't give a free kick. VAR is not really supposed to overrule a referee under those circumstances. Except if you are burnley. For instance, I don't like the way that VAR won't overrule a ref, or strongly suggest that he might want to look at the monitor, and I think that if VAR was being implemented properly that man utd goal should have been ruled out. But I would have been absolutely fucking furious if they had changed those rules for 30 seconds in today's game.

Again, to be fair to Origi his fall to the ground wasn't really as you so colourfully described it. The ball was played into him, he took it on his right foot, knocked it to his left and went to spin off Lindelof, which was when the latter kicked the former's shin. Origi's left leg was off of the ground too which would have accentuated the effect of the kick. Any exaggeration was fairly minimal.

But yes. VAR's a bit of a mess.

[Satchmo Distel]

Klopp seems to be deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting how VAR works.* The failure to call a foul on Origi was the fault of the ref not the fault of a VAR system whose rules clearly don't cover that kind of error.

*I'm not singling out Klopp. I'm sure every other manager in the top flight would do the same, because most post-match whines are done in bad faith, a trend started by Ferguson and Wenger (or whenever the interviewing of managers became a compulsory part of the media ritual, probably when Sky took over the contract; not sure if it was a feature of when ITV had the rights in the late 80s/early 90s and Gary Newbon scavenged for dug-out scuttlebutt).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Again, to be fair to Origi his fall to the ground wasn't really as you so colourfully described it. The ball was played into him, he took it on his right foot, knocked it to his left and went to spin off Lindelof, which was when the latter kicked the former's shin. Origi's left leg was off of the ground too which would have accentuated the effect of the kick. Any exaggeration was fairly minimal.

But yes. VAR's a bit of a mess.

I think we may be talking about separate incidents, or we seem to be. Lindelof pokes him in the back of the left calf with his toe as he's starting to turn to his left, Instead of slowing his turn to the left, and making him just fall down, he whips back his left leg and speeds up his turn, rolls twice and winds up 15 feet away from lindelof. If he'd just fallen down on his arse clutching his calf, which was obviously going to be pretty sore,. he'd have probably got a free kick. I think he expected Lindelof to plough into the back of him, and wound up looking a bit foolish when he just stood there.

[Uncle Ethan]

VAR will always be a mess. No sign of it improving in Australia either where on Sunday we saw a retake ordered because the keeper moved when he saved the first effort but nothing done when players clearly encroached as the second shot was scored. Remember a malfunctioning VAR actually helped decide a Grand Final in Oz two seasons back and still it hasn't been fixed.

However, we are either going to spend the rest of our lives discussing only VAR or just accept it and move on. There needs to be clear coverage of the reviews that can be seen and heard in the ground and every second taken for a review needs to be added on to the game in addition to other added time.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Klopp seems to be deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting how VAR works.* The failure to call a foul on Origi was the fault of the ref not the fault of a VAR system whose rules clearly don't cover that kind of error.

But what would be the point of that? I haven't really seen klopp do that sort of thing. The problem with deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting something, is that a lot of people will know that you are wrong, and will come back at you for not knowing. It's more likely that he missed the memo that it had changed, because if he knew how it worked, he could just have said the appropriate thing for someone in his position. He could still have been very annoyed, but it would have made more sense, and he would be more plausible.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I think we may be talking about separate incidents, or we seem to be. Lindelof pokes him in the back of the left calf with his toe as he's starting to turn to his left, Instead of slowing his turn to the left, and making him just fall down, he whips back his left leg and speeds up his turn, rolls twice and winds up 15 feet away from lindelof. If he'd just fallen down on his arse clutching his calf, which was obviously going to be pretty sore,. he'd have probably got a free kick. I think he expected Lindelof to plough into the back of him, and wound up looking a bit foolish when he just stood there.

If you're able to watch MotD2 have a look again. The kick is to the left shin, or shinpad to be precise, when the leg was off of the ground.

I suppose that we both agree that it was a foul though, which is the main thing.