Handball ref? Ref?

My personal feel is that VAR taking too long only comes about when it is one of the favoured teams.

I know not necessarily favoured but take the Villa offside. It was clearly not a goal on the first look for 2 separate obvious reasons. Yet it took an age, along with looking at the next phase of play, which was just not needed.

Last night, 2 big decisions that could have easily been seen as going the other way, checks over in seconds.

Now we are all for the speeding up of checks but not necessarily when something really does need looking into.

In some sense I agree with both the handball and the penalty decision last night. It was not a clear error by the on field ref, but this is where consistency is the matter brought into question, we all know for a fact that VAR would have intervened and told the ref to look at the replays, for both or at least one of the incidents, if they were potentially for certain clubs.

It is out there, conscious or not, we may never know. There is however a definite change in how VAR works in certain games.
 
I’ve said it a trillion times before, relating to situations for and against us, and ones that don’t even involve us: Accidental or otherwise shouldn’t come into it.

Unless it hits a hand or arm that is shielding a part of the body that the ball would otherwise hit, it should be handball.

“He couldn’t get his hand out of the way” or “his arm was in a natural position” is garbage. If a player sticks out a leg in a genuine attempt to play a loose ball, which is knocked away at the last split second and he trips a player, there’s no question that it’s a penalty, regardless of intent. If a defender is running side by side with an attacker, making all natural movements under that circumstance, and legs get tangled and the attacker goes down, you can bet it’s a pen more often than not.

While there remains this level of subjectivity behind the interpretation of the rule, we’ll continue to see these wild inconsistencies with decisions. I don’t buy into a league wide conspiracy against us, but at the same time it’s hard to shake the feeling at the moment that last night would have been a nailed on pen in the opposite box.
 
We need to go back to the days of ‘deliberate’ hand ball only as an offence. It takes away nearly all the ambiguity. Unless a player deliberately moves his hand towards the ball, no matter where or what position his arm is in, it’s not a foul
Then you get the "John Terry" block with arms out. No movement, but his arms are making himself bigger.
 

Clear and obvious handball and penalty. Arm was not in a natural position at his side and was actually closer to horizontal meaning it had to be moving towards the ball. It is not even questionable and any other club gets awarded a penalty. There is a very blatant agenda against Everton from both the PL and the PGMOL.
 
The Harrison one was a bit iffy too, and probably would have gone the way of a sly six team - playing the bal but taking the man etc. We have far too many bad shouts for it to be unlucky. It stinks. Those extra points we would have almost certainly attained/negated from half of those decisions would have out us 3 or 4 points above Luton already - and Im sure more iffy decisions are yet to come.
Definitely agree on this.

Sly 6 = there's contact, so he's entitled to go down.

Non-sly 6 = not enough contact to go down.

It's not even debatable, it's bare faced corruption/cheating whatever you want to call it.
 
Didn't even see this last night, when was there a handball?

Certainly there was no announcement in the ground or anything that a VAR review was in progress.
 

Didn't even see this last night, when was there a handball?

Certainly there was no announcement in the ground or anything that a VAR review was in progress.

When they cleared it off the line, it was only travelling over the line because it came of Robinsons outstretched hand.
 
I know this could go in the VAR thread, but it's irritaing me that I don't know what the rules are with handball. When I was a nipper, and it could be my memory is playing tricks on me, if it struck your arm it was handball. Tough luck. I have a hazy memory of discussion around accidental vs non-accidental, but that might have been later.
I'm obviously biased, but I don't understand how that wasn't handball last night. Because he knocked it towards goal, because there was a goal-line review? I know that there is an element of subjectivity in relation to whether a foul is a foul and I can accept that (e.g. not sure about Godfrey's yellow card, but fine, I can see why it was given as a free kick). But surely if that had hit his hand anywhere else on the pitch that was handball? What's the rules yo? I feel like I'm watching something like ice-hockey or basketball and there is a foul but I don't know why, it's annoying. Help a middle-aged simpleton to understand please
Short version is -
Sadly, 'Ball to Hand' as a concept pretty much no longer exists...even, iirc, in the written rules - if it ever did
 

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