VAR is already becoming problematic in that there is no consistency or clear remit for when the ref will use it. 

"Oh hold on, let me stop play for a minute to dispute whether this is a corner or a free kick". 

Player goes down after contact in the penalty area... Instantly issues a card for diving rather than referring to the video assistant to make sure. 

If the FA are going to implement VAR they need to be a lot clearer and a lot more consistent about how and when it is used because last night it became a point of contention when it's supposed to be the complete opposite. 

If you're going to introduce such a powerful tool into the game you've got to avoid such ambiguity about it. 

1 hour ago, Qaz said:

While i was also upset at the refereeing at the risk of upsetting everyone here...

VAR can only be used for
1. Goals
2. Penalties
3. Red (not yellow) cards
4. Mistaken identity

In the case of Willian and Morata going down. It's the penalty call being reviewed, not whether Willian or Morata should have received yellow cards for diving. That was outside the remit of VAR and was the referees call.

Is that a flaw in the system? Quite possibly. But that's the system in its current form.

But, correct me if I'm wrong, willian and moratta were booked for diving to win penalties. For Willians "dive" he should definitely have referred to the VAR been told it's a penalty and Willian wouldn't have been booked. 

Moratta I'm not sure if it was on the half way line or anywhere else on the pitch it's a foul but it would have been a bit of a soft penalty. 

The main thing I just hate is that it's the referees who have made diving a thing, if they gave penalties for fouls when a player stays on their feet then players wouldn't have to exaggerate contact to go down to win the penalty. 

I suppose that, if the video ref had awarded the Willian pen, he wouldn't have been able to overturn the card the ref had already issued, because the FA rules are that yellow cards are nor reviewable.

 

But, correct me if I'm wrong, willian and moratta were booked for diving to win penalties. For Willians "dive" he should definitely have referred to the VAR been told it's a penalty and Willian wouldn't have been booked. 

Moratta I'm not sure if it was on the half way line or anywhere else on the pitch it's a foul but it would have been a bit of a soft penalty. 

The main thing I just hate is that it's the referees who have made diving a thing, if they gave penalties for fouls when a player stays on their feet then players wouldn't have to exaggerate contact to go down to win the penalty. 

VAR is always occurring. Unless I'm mistaken (and please correct me with a reference if possible if I am), there is no "refer to VAR". If the referee makes a "clear mistake" in one of the four (stated above) cases, then the VAR ref will bring it up to the field ref.

 

To say refer to VAR is misunderstanding that VAR is happening all game regardless of whether play is stopped for it.

Being a referee is harder now than it's ever been:

1) The game is progressively being played at a faster pace - this will inherently make it harder to keep up and give referees less time in which to make snap decisions;

2) The game is progressively becoming stricter - this will inherently make it harder as there are simply more rules that needs to be enforced;

3) The game is now more accessible - you don't need to have attended a match or even seen it on television to be exposed to replays of events which happened in it - this means that referees are under wider scrutiny than ever. In addition to that, the seemingly ubiquitous presence of social media has allowed any person with an internet connection a platform on which to express their opinions, leading to millions and millions of people offering a (frequently visceral) view on events in games.

4) Clips of old games are now stored within more than human memory and those novelty 'season highlights' videos - this means that every mistake a referee makes is permanently stored on a universally-available platform.

 

This doesn't necessarily excuse some of the appalling performances we've seen from officials over the years, but it does provide some context for the ever-increasing sense of rage and injustice at refereeing performances that I've noticed over the past decade or so.

The lack of consistency is a problem for me. Going all the way back to the JT Anton Ferdinand controversy. Chris Foy reffed that game abysmally. We hardly got a decision all game, whereas QPR were getting free kicks and decisions to their benefit all game. Ferdinand elbows Terry in the head and HE (Ferdinand) gets the decision in his favour. Please note I am not commenting on the alleged racial slur, that is another matter. But sometimes its the little constant bad decisions rather than one big call in a match, that leads to frustration from players.

But once again in that game we ended up with 9 men, which seems to happen to us a lot, maybe we do have a discipline problem although I suspect we are no worse than any other team, but I would be interested to see how often other teams end up with nine men on the pitch, this is the second time its happened to us this season. This in turn leads to frustration from players.

The Man U game were Torres got a second yellow for diving and we ended up with nine men again. The replays showed that he was clearly caught by Evans, but noone called Evans a cheat, what's the difference between getting someone unfairly sent off for diving or actually diving and getting a pen ? )

 I don't mind fair decisions and I accept that at times we benefit from dodgy ones as well, but I'd rather we didn't benefit from ropey decisions and all games we reffed fairly and consistently (not going to happen I know, due to Human fallibility)

Edited January 18, 20188 yr by SHELLY
missed out a sentence

2 hours ago, zolawannabe25 said:

But, correct me if I'm wrong, willian and moratta were booked for diving to win penalties. For Willians "dive" he should definitely have referred to the VAR been told it's a penalty and Willian wouldn't have been booked. 

Moratta I'm not sure if it was on the half way line or anywhere else on the pitch it's a foul but it would have been a bit of a soft penalty. 

The main thing I just hate is that it's the referees who have made diving a thing, if they gave penalties for fouls when a player stays on their feet then players wouldn't have to exaggerate contact to go down to win the penalty. 

So here's where I think some people might be confused.

The ref doesn't need to stop, make a signal, draw a box with his hands or speak into the microphone for VAR to be used.  The VAR ref looks at every decision as the game continues and then notifies the onfield ref when it's possible to do so.

So really, with penalties, the ref should award a penalty for every marginal decision, because the game then comes to a stop. The VAR can then review it and either confirm it or overturn it and give the free kick the other way for diving, with any yellow based on video evidence rather than an incorrect ref's judgement. The other way around is more difficult, as play continues for a while and there might be a goal at the other end that has to be chalked off because the other side gets a pen two minutes earlier.

1 minute ago, Backbiter said:

So really, with penalties, the ref should award a penalty for every marginal decision, because the game then comes to a stop. The VAR can then review it and either confirm it or overturn it and give the free kick the other way for diving, with any yellow based on video evidence rather than an incorrect ref's judgement. The other way around is more difficult, as play continues for a while and there might be a goal at the other end that has to be chalked off because the other side gets a pen two minutes earlier.

Well yeah the commentators said something along those lines but the opposite for offside.  Basically never call offside and let the play continue to see if a goal is scored, and if it is then they have time to review the offside.

At the moment it seems too black and white to me. It's either a penalty or a yellow card, but in a lot of cases it's neither.

Football is a contact sport, so you can touch someone in the box without it warranting a penalty. On the other hand, contact isn't required for it to be a foul according to the rules. 

We also have the argument of whether or not a player could have stayed on his feet, but it is totally irrelevant, you don't need to go down for it be a foul. 

Last night the ref booked Willian and morata within seconds of the incident. Basically calling them cheats. What if he got the call saying he was wrong, how does he rescind that yellow card on field? 

He should've followed the review process we saw in the arsenal game, and then if it was a clear dive, book the player then. 

He got the process all wrong last night, and by immediately booking players for simulation, I think it put the var team in a position, where any over ruling would have lead to utter chaos trying to decipher who got booked, who got sent off, does a booking for dissent still stand after an incorrect decision. 

They let play continue which was obviously the wrong decision, as now the whole system is under scrutiny, when I think it was wrongly implemented by the referee. 

 

Edited January 18, 20188 yr by big blue

12 hours ago, rtwelch said:

I'm sorry but when one of your players dives you run the risk of not getting other decisions. We brought it on ourselves.

Not sure how you can say that? Your claiming that if one player on our team dives once it influences the refs decision for the whole of the game being biased to the other team?

If the ref did that then he isn’t really doing his job of reffing the game fair is he?

11 minutes ago, big blue said:

Last night the ref booked Willian and morata within seconds of the incident. Basically calling them cheats. What if he got the call saying he was wrong, how does he rescind that yellow card on field? 

He should've followed the review process we saw in the arsenal game, and then if it was a clear dive, book the player then. 

 

Absolutely. I think some refs dont realise that when they book a player for diving they are calling him a cheat. In a lot of these circumstances they are not cheating so the reaction from Morata is understandable. 

Refs need to wait until after the game and if the player has dived they can get suspended. 

In order for the refereeing to be fair and consistent we need to take the human out of the equation as much as possible, that French ref kicking another player, Clattenburg sucking his own cock every time he's on the pitch, these guys have egos, opinions and bias no matter if they are a prison guard or teacher or whatever as long as they are human they are flawed.

I think the FA needs to do more in getting ex players into officiating, most refs nowadays are overweight middle aged men who have never played a competitive game of football in there lives. They have no sense of empathy for the players because they have never been in similar scenarios in addition I think players may respect ex players officiating a lot more due to some level of association.

I don't know about referees, but it's pathetic that some of our players go down on the slightest contact. In some of the situations, they could have stayed on their feet and had a shot at goal. Instead, they flop and hope for a penalty, which may not be given. We need to stamp it out asap. When you develop the reputation for going down easily, you will tend to get fewer penalty decisions. It's just human nature

4 hours ago, TheSage said:

I don't know about referees, but it's pathetic that some of our players go down on the slightest contact. In some of the situations, they could have stayed on their feet and had a shot at goal. Instead, they flop and hope for a penalty, which may not be given. We need to stamp it out asap. When you develop the reputation for going down easily, you will tend to get fewer penalty decisions. It's just human nature

Only one player is going down with the slightest contact though, and that is Morata, you can't blame the whole team for that. Also, before Morata, you couldn't say any of our players were going down too easily, no more than in any other team at least, so why weren't we getting penalties before ? For the last 4 season's now we have been denied penalty after penalty even when they have been clear as day. The thing is, one of our players will dive and you will never hear the end of it, when a United player dives (like Pogba did a few weeks back and Ashley Young scored from it) it get's forgotten about quickly.

Here is what you can expect from VAR if it's fully implemented into the game.

Ref goes to VAR. The decision is made that Jara did elbow Werner, but the ref only gives a yellow card. If he has deliberately elbowed a player, why hasn't he been sent off?

 

Mabouka plants his foot into Can. The ref takes forever to go to VAR. VAR is finally used, the ref then comes back and sends off the wrong player, he then goes back to VAR and eventually sends off the correct player. You could say he got there in the end, but look how long this took and how much hassle it was. So many mistakes and time wasted for what should have been sorted in seconds.

Chile player is clearly bought down by Fonte for Portugal.......VAR wasn't even used.

Watch from 31 seconds. Vargas is put through on goal, he scores, the linesman keeps his flag down. Ref goes to VAR, replays show that Vargas is ONSIDE.........the goal is disallowed. Decisions are supposed to be only overturned if the ref has clearly got it wrong, so why was this one overturned ? First off, the linesman got it spot on by not putting his flag up, and even if Vargas is offside, it wasn't 100% clear, so the goal should have stood anyway.

 

Now here's VAR being used in Germany.

The defender has slightly tugged back Lewandowski, the ref goes to VAR and it's decided that the defender HAS pulled back Lewandowski and Bayern are awarded a penalty. Doesn't that seem very similar to last night with Morata ? But instead of Morata getting a penalty, he is booked instead.

 

These are all examples of refs from different countries using VAR. They all clearly view the rules of football differently and it's clear that the way VAR is currently being used is going to cause all kind of problems. The refs are still making mistakes even with VAR in place, so what is the point in it ?

Edited January 18, 20188 yr by Scott Harris

20 hours ago, JMaher94 said:

Agreed.

You can guarantee that if it was Old Trafford, there would have been two penalties given tonight.

English players get such an easy rub of the green in this country. Alli + Kane should have both seen red when they played City but both got away with it. Rooney over the years has got away with it many times as well.

Absolute joke.

Fully agreed, English bias is ridiculous in this country.

I remember when Wayne Rooney dived for a penalty and Martin Keown was trying to justify it, only English players get this sort of privilege. 

Know what would make VAR, and officiating in general, far more accurate and reliable?  Make the match day official and VAR official have to give a press conference after the match, as the managers are forced, where they can be asked to explain why certain calls were made.

 

I mean, we've seen what a fear of accountability did in changing Clattenburg's approach to officiating, maybe making them have to explain their decisions will simply lead to better ones being made, especially as they can now use VAR to ensure major calls are properly looked at before deciding the outcome of the call.

6 hours ago, Imran_CFC said:

I think the FA needs to do more in getting ex players into officiating, most refs nowadays are overweight middle aged men who have never played a competitive game of football in there lives. They have no sense of empathy for the players because they have never been in similar scenarios in addition I think players may respect ex players officiating a lot more due to some level of association.

It would never work Imran, it's hard to get impartial people to officiate football as it is, could you imagine Frank Lampard, for instance, officiating a Chelsea match or any PL match which could in some way benefit Chelsea? He's obviously going to be biased as will most ex-players who officiate PL games. 

Referees do have a very hard job cliche or not, and I've made the point numerous times that the rules just aren't consistent enough. 

How does Chris Smalling get away with grabbing shirts every week? Why was Mane sent off against City but not all the other players who made similar challenges? Why are fouls outside the box not usually fouls inside the box? Everything is so subjective. For example, MOTD you had Phil Neville justifying the Phil Jones foul by Morata, when in reality Phil Jones slipped over and scored an own goal, Morata made the slightest contact as he's allowed to do. Why is it always 50/50 when it comes to punditry on these decisions? Why is there nobody pointing to the rule book and saying "Nope, here look! These are the facts, this is allowed, this isn't!" 

It's pretty much up to the referee what happens, the referee isn't doing a simple job anymore, he's practically determining what's a foul and what isn't, that's bound to make the games much more controversial. 

They will continue to be sh*t until there is some sort of accountability which will never come. 

The game has a lot of grey areas that need addressing. VAR takes care of the obvious incidents (or at least it will when they figure out the best way to use it). But so many other areas are open to different interpretations by the officials.

Holding, pulling, pushing, are all parts of this contact sport to some degree, but where is the line between fair play and foul play ?