VAR


Many say the VAR refs are terrible but aren't the VAR refs the refs on the pitch the next week? Attwell on VAR Us/Forest and then he was the ref on the pitch Us/Sheff Utd.

It can't be VAR that is rubbish but how they use it and/or have been shown how to use it - also the general overall poor standard of refereeing maybe (Attwell for one, rubbish on VAR and on the pitch, Pawson's another).

There is always corruption, of course.
 
The whole process needs looking at. From the snippets that the league releases it's lacking in procedure and completely amateurish. Astonishing given the amount of money involved in the supposed best league in the world...
 
Please get rid. Went through a stage of every single one of our goals going through VAR recently. It kills the game. Rather one person got it wrong than a goal being awarded and then someone digging through footage to find a reason why it shouldn't be.

We have goal line tech, we'll have the automated offside tech brought in and that'll at least stop those contentious decisions and we just deal with the rest how it used to be.
 

On penalties, all VAR should do is identify the more difficult to interpret situations and give the ref a chance to thoroughly review it with the benefit of various angles on replay. If the VAR is taking that chance for a better look away from the ref, then that is a problem. All the plays involving Ashley Young against Nottingham Forest needed to be looked at again by the ref. If the ref still decides no foul, then VAR did it's job.
 
VAR generally works very well in terms of getting ultimately correct decisions. There's a very low percentage of stone wall never in a month of Sundays demonstrably incorrect decisions and as long as there's human involvement those errors will always be there. The major downsides are the time it takes and the lack of communication with spectators.

A big issue is perception. In a game where the rules are open to interpretation and decisions are scrutinised by people with entirely vested interests it's never going to be free of speculation regarding bias, incompetence or alleged corruption. Fans will always emphasise things that align with their interests and casually disregard anything that points out quite clearly the flaws in their claims. Many paid pundits are frequently oblivious to actual written laws that VAR has to abide by and will disregard them as it bruises their ego to have it pointed out they don't actually know those laws despite their self important regard for themselves as football people.

With VAR you get more correct decisions but it's much more disruptive to the flow of the game. Without VAR you'll get better flow but more incorrect decisions and many more of the genuinely ridiculous incorrect mistakes or oversights that can't be argued away in any way, shape or form - Henry handball vs Ireland, wrong player booked, players way offside or play stopped for incorrectly given offside etc.

It'd all be a lot better if people, and the media, weren't so hung up on the fact that sometimes players get away with something and accept that most decisions they're outraged about don't bother them in the slightest when a similar thing goes their way. You don't always get the rub of the green, sometimes you do and nearly all supposedly terrible decisions aren't actually that bad. They're just not what you wanted - stop yelling.

TL DR - I blame the fans. And TalkSport. And it's always gonna be crap regardless because of them.
 
It needs tweaking and that. The concept itself isn't bad. The implementation of it is. Spending 3 or 4 minutes looking at a decision is wrong.
If it's not clear and obvious within 30 seconds. Then it's not clear and obvious at all is it .
And then you get "They deliberately took longer than 30 secs because of the PGMOL, Premier League, Sky 6 (insert chosen conspiracy here)....."
 

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