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DJ Barry Hammond

The VAR thread

What are your thoughts on VAR?  

679 members have voted

  1. 1. What are your thoughts on VAR?

    • Love it, all for it, fantastic introduction to football
      109
    • Hate it, games gone
      236
    • Somewhere in between
      334

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  • Poll closed on 17/05/20 at 19:00

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23 minutes ago, Walkers said:

Can't get my head around some of the comments nationally re. Wolves disallowed goal. "Cant celebrate a goal now FFS!!!!!" It wasn't a legal goal. Surely teams not being shat on by goals going in against them that shouldn't have counted is more important than fans having to uncelebrate a ****ing goal? I know its not all Wolves fans saying this but I look forward to hearing a pin drop at Molineux when Wolves benefit from exactly the same situation.

INCIDENT: Wolves appeared to score a second-half goal through Leander Dendoncker, but VAR overturned it for handball against Willy Boly.

DERMOT'S VERDICT: Correct decision, handball.

DERMOT SAYS: It was decided that we cannot score with our hand, arm, or create a goal with it. And that was because of last season and, ironically, Boly (who scored a controversial goal with the aid of his arm against Man City). There's no way he meant to do this, but there is no doubt it has struck his arm and rebounded to Dendoncker, who has then scored because of that.

That may appear a little harsh, but that is a consequence of the law change in so much as they did not want goals scored with the arm. And no matter how accidental it was, it was scored because of that reason and therefore, no goal.

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16 hours ago, orangecity23 said:

Quick Nuno guide to spirit of the game:

 

Not in the spirit of the game: Fans celebrating goals not being given against their team, officials referring the match to the rules of the game.

 

In the spirit of the game: Wily Boly deliberately punching the ball into the net, Nuno running onto the pitch to celebrate like a massive bellend on the pitch after winning goals.

 

Nuno wasn't criticising Leicester fans in the slightest, he was criticising the decision making process, the euphoria should be in your own team scoring but that VAR process forces fans into celebrating the oppositions goal being taken away 90 seconds after the fact. It's weird and I 100% agree with him. 

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6 hours ago, UniFox21 said:

This is quite interesting; that they'd change offside intervention to it only being clear and obvious decisions that are over ruled by VAR. Giving power back to the officials.

But then again, clear and obvious offside is open to debate. 

 

Wouldn't be brought in until at least March anyway. 

 

So VAR would literally know that a goal is offside and shouldn't stand, but it wouldn't intervene because it wasn't 'clear and obvious?'

 

And how the hell are they supposed to judge what's clear and obvious? Is 20cm obvious but 15cm isn't?

 

Since it's there, I don't see what options they have apart from to rigidly apply the law, like in the Man City game.

 

I'm not sure there's a satisfactory way out of this. 

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40 minutes ago, Jonaldinho said:

So VAR would literally know that a goal is offside and shouldn't stand, but it wouldn't intervene because it wasn't 'clear and obvious?'

 

And how the hell are they supposed to judge what's clear and obvious? Is 20cm obvious but 15cm isn't?

 

Since it's there, I don't see what options they have apart from to rigidly apply the law, like in the Man City game.

 

I'm not sure there's a satisfactory way out of this. 

Only way is if they introduced an error margin somehow, similar to cricket, where if its dubious or w/e they go with the umpires call

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1 hour ago, Jonaldinho said:

So VAR would literally know that a goal is offside and shouldn't stand, but it wouldn't intervene because it wasn't 'clear and obvious?'

 

And how the hell are they supposed to judge what's clear and obvious? Is 20cm obvious but 15cm isn't?

 

Since it's there, I don't see what options they have apart from to rigidly apply the law, like in the Man City game.

 

I'm not sure there's a satisfactory way out of this. 

But you're so focused on the question of how many cm it is that you're losing track of the entire point of the rule. Offside is there to stop attackers gaining an unfair advantage by goal hanging, and was a rule implemented when the game was completely different. It wouldn't have made any difference if Sterling was an inch or two back. It's irrelevant. West Ham's defence was completely beaten either way. And if it wouldn't make any difference then clearly it's not an unfair advantage.

 

It's not a case of 1mm, 1cm, 5cm, that's the wrong question. The question is, "is this unfair enough to rule the goal out"? That's not a mathematical question that can be answered with a measuring tape, that's a subjective decision. Personally I think that ruling Sterling's goal out was harsh, unfair, and missing the entire point of the rule.

 

As it happens, I think goals like Boly's goal last year vs. City should be against the rules and it's a good change to disallow those goals. It seems unfair and against the spirit of the game. In the same way Boly having the ball headed at him from a foot away, when his arm was in a completely reasonable position seems unfair. A certain goal could have been stopped in the same way and it wouldn't have been handball. No one would have complained if the goal was given.

 

The problem isn't VAR, the problem is VAR being used to enforce inappropriate pedantic rules that miss the point of the game. VAR is there to answer obvious questions, not to spend 90 seconds hunting around with microscopes for reasons to disallow goals.

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20 minutes ago, DasWolf said:

But you're so focused on the question of how many cm it is that you're losing track of the entire point of the rule. Offside is there to stop attackers gaining an unfair advantage by goal hanging, and was a rule implemented when the game was completely different. It wouldn't have made any difference if Sterling was an inch or two back. It's irrelevant. West Ham's defence was completely beaten either way. And if it wouldn't make any difference then clearly it's not an unfair advantage.

 

It's not a case of 1mm, 1cm, 5cm, that's the wrong question. The question is, "is this unfair enough to rule the goal out"? That's not a mathematical question that can be answered with a measuring tape, that's a subjective decision. Personally I think that ruling Sterling's goal out was harsh, unfair, and missing the entire point of the rule.

 

As it happens, I think goals like Boly's goal last year vs. City should be against the rules and it's a good change to disallow those goals. It seems unfair and against the spirit of the game. In the same way Boly having the ball headed at him from a foot away, when his arm was in a completely reasonable position seems unfair. A certain goal could have been stopped in the same way and it wouldn't have been handball. No one would have complained if the goal was given.

 

The problem isn't VAR, the problem is VAR being used to enforce inappropriate pedantic rules that miss the point of the game. VAR is there to answer obvious questions, not to spend 90 seconds hunting around with microscopes for reasons to disallow goals.

I see your point and it's a fair one, but I just don't think judging whether something is 'fair' or not is remotely possible with something like VAR.  

 

Surely the whole point of technology in sport is to make things black-and-white, onside or offside, on the line or over the line. The problem is that the margins are so fine with offside that VAR is having to check multiple angles and draw red and blue lines on the screen while fans are left in limbo, and even after the decisions are made you have people questioning if the lines are accurate. It's just a cesspit of confusion and unhappiness and I can't see any quick fix for it. 

 

As for the Boly handball, that's more to do with the handball rule change and is a different argument altogether.

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4 hours ago, Lionheart10 said:

Had to laugh on Sunday,when it came up on screen about checking goal everyone round me was singing F**k VAR,F**k VAR.When it was overturned everyone started singing We Love VAR say WE Love VAR!!

 

Its one of those thing like before it came in some will go against us some will go for us and by end of season it will even out.

Sooo, kinda like having a referee make decisions?  lol 

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6 minutes ago, Jonaldinho said:

I see your point and it's a fair one, but I just don't think judging whether something is 'fair' or not is remotely possible with something like VAR.  

 

Surely the whole point of technology in sport is to make things black-and-white, onside or offside, on the line or over the line. The problem is that the margins are so fine with offside that VAR is having to check multiple angles and draw red and blue lines on the screen while fans are left in limbo, and even after the decisions are made you have people questioning if the lines are accurate. It's just a cesspit of confusion and unhappiness and I can't see any quick fix for it. 

 

As for the Boly handball, that's more to do with the handball rule change and is a different argument altogether.

Technology is there to enforce the rules. Rules are there to enforce the spirit of the game. The goal of technology isn't to make everything black/white but ultimately to help make the game fair and enjoyable. Rules are the best attempt to keep to the spirit of the game but they can have loopholes, or not be fit for purpose.

 

With certain rules, it is black and white. Goal line tech is excellent because it answers a yes/no question instantly: did the ball cross the line. Was that foul inside the box or outside? Other rules aren't and for good reason. Was that excessive force? Almost impossible to objectively define. Did that defender handball it, or was it ball to hand? We could make defensive handball a black/white thing like attacking handball but that wouldn't make the game better. We'd just end up with attacking teams smashing the ball at defenders' arms. So instead we apply common sense to answer the question on if it was unfair or not.

 

Offside is currently defined as a black and white issue, but the game was different when it was introduced. It was concerned with stopping goal hanging, not determining if certain body parts were fractions of an inch ahead. It was never intended for the use it's now being put to. With the limitations of technology and the speed of the game at the time, the offside rule was a decent enough way of solving the problem of "how do we stop attackers gaining an unfair advantage". When we start looking at fractions of an inch, we're forgetting why we're looking to begin with, and probably need to change the rules to accurately reflect the modern game and the spirit of football.

 

We watch football to be entertained and watch players compete within the spirit of the game. We don't watch it to wait minutes for robots to check for semantics and stupid technicalities, or some stupid FIFA bureaucrat's idea that Sterling's armpit being1mm further ahead is so unfair we need to rule the goal out.

 

With VAR what we want is a system that can tell is quickly if there was there anything obviously wrong with this goal that was missed in real time. If it takes that long it's not obvious, and if it's not obvious we shouldn't care.

 

When it comes to other stuff like a penalty or not, or a red card or not, I'm okay with waiting a minute or so. But not for goals. That's not what we're there for.

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2 hours ago, Jonaldinho said:

So VAR would literally know that a goal is offside and shouldn't stand, but it wouldn't intervene because it wasn't 'clear and obvious?'

 

And how the hell are they supposed to judge what's clear and obvious? Is 20cm obvious but 15cm isn't?

 

Since it's there, I don't see what options they have apart from to rigidly apply the law, like in the Man City game.

 

I'm not sure there's a satisfactory way out of this. 

No, 20cm is obvious but 2mm isn't, i think it means an obvious offside that a linesman has missed, and we do see a lot of them because linesmen sometimes are out of position etc. Also, maybe they should put a 10-15 second limit on a decision, as any longer is not obvious, the players are normally still celebrating for a minute anyway.

Edited by yorkie1999
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I am as guilty as charged. I wanted technology and thought it would help sort of some of the rubbish that goes on in the game.

 

The problem is I've realised that this is going to come at a cost that I simply cannot accept. Your Aguero moments, your Hazard moments, your Beckham v Greece moments. They're going to be lost when VAR is an accepted part of the game - when everyone doesn't fully lose it when they score a goal anymore because they aren't 100% sure if it's a goal or not.

 

I was massively naive. Scoring a goal is the best part of football. It's the objective at the end and what all of the small parts leading up to it add up to. When you are watering down this very moment, you are fundamentally taking something enormous away from the game.

 

I keep hearing phrases like 'trial and error' and 'teething problems'. Really? This has been going on for over two years now. This isn't borne out of one weekend of the Premier League. It's been in Europe, international and continental football for a while.

 

I would be lying if I said it wasn't without benefits. Although the rules still leave things quite open to interpretation, you are more likely to get decisions right, although importantly, not every one of them. So I ask myself are you willing to sacrifice the emotion and passion in order to improve the decision making a bit more?

 

I can hand on heart say I would be less frustrated if I was sat here having seen us lose to Wolves at the weekend through a Dendoncker goal. Not in terms of our result, but the bigger picture of football in general - there's more to it than just one game against Wolves, one game that would admittedly be quite a hard to take loss, but a realisation that this is likely to happen to us and likely to rob us of some potential memories. Look at the bigger picture.

 

Keep the authenticity and keep the emotion. The imperfection is what makes it unique and the ultimate sport of the lot. Take the passion away and eventually the sport will cease to become what it is.

 

Bin it.

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The goal celebration thing was my biggest concern at the outset ages ago

 

i haven’t seen anything in great depth from the continent about this so I assumed it hadn’t become the issue I expected It to

 

i would have thought the system could be tweaked so that one of the var officials could immediately say to the on field officials that they noticed something that needs looking at (we may need to increase the number of officials in Stockley park so that one is looking solely at a side view re offside, one at the grappling in the box, one only at the ball re handball in order that the lino is told straight away if one has seen something and the var ref needs to look further) in which case the lino could raise his flag. That was always the dreaded signal that something is amiss and stifled the celebrations. at the moment every goal is checked and the way it works is that everyone believes those officials are looking for a reason to disallow the goal for thirty seconds or so. if we have that flag going up within a couple  seconds then we know to stifle the going mad bit.  It really wouldn’t be that often I reckon.  When you watch a game on the telly, you always have an inkling there is a problem and you aren’t looking specifically at one thing as the var officials would be. 

 

We we will get there but some of the laws need more work to reflect var scrutiny aswell. 

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On 13/08/2019 at 16:17, DasWolf said:

But you're so focused on the question of how many cm it is that you're losing track of the entire point of the rule. Offside is there to stop attackers gaining an unfair advantage by goal hanging, and was a rule implemented when the game was completely different. It wouldn't have made any difference if Sterling was an inch or two back. It's irrelevant. West Ham's defence was completely beaten either way. And if it wouldn't make any difference then clearly it's not an unfair advantage.

 

It's not a case of 1mm, 1cm, 5cm, that's the wrong question. The question is, "is this unfair enough to rule the goal out"? That's not a mathematical question that can be answered with a measuring tape, that's a subjective decision. Personally I think that ruling Sterling's goal out was harsh, unfair, and missing the entire point of the rule.

 

As it happens, I think goals like Boly's goal last year vs. City should be against the rules and it's a good change to disallow those goals. It seems unfair and against the spirit of the game. In the same way Boly having the ball headed at him from a foot away, when his arm was in a completely reasonable position seems unfair. A certain goal could have been stopped in the same way and it wouldn't have been handball. No one would have complained if the goal was given.

 

The problem isn't VAR, the problem is VAR being used to enforce inappropriate pedantic rules that miss the point of the game. VAR is there to answer obvious questions, not to spend 90 seconds hunting around with microscopes for reasons to disallow goals.

 

A defender moving forward to play an attacker offside (even by 1cm), gives the attacker an advantage when he is actually offside, no matter how small the margin. If it’s ‘clear and obvious’, the assistant referee should be raising a flag. 

 

A defender will be beaten by a player who is offside by a small amount as they are playing to make the attacker offside, just because they aren’t playing the ball, they are playing their game. Anticipating when the ball will be played and when the attacker will make his run is just as important as the two plays I mentioned. 

 

I do agree that it does take a fraction of the excitement away but it rules out illegitimate goals which is one of the primary reasons it was brought in. Offside is offside, it couldn’t be more black and white when you have VAR checking it.  

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We need to ask why was VAR introduced...?

 

it was not introduced to improve the excitement of the game

It was not introduced to improve the spectacle for the fans.

It was not introduced to improve safety for players or fans

 

Why was it introduced?

 

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2 hours ago, ozleicester said:

We need to ask why was VAR introduced...?

 

it was not introduced to improve the excitement of the game

It was not introduced to improve the spectacle for the fans.

It was not introduced to improve safety for players or fans

 

Why was it introduced?

 

To eliminate wrong decisions which led to goals being scored (or not in the case of pens) ......

 

thats considered more important than the other three statements ........

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This is quite a nice idea, gives that benefit of the doubt and stops the 1mm offside being given. But this still has flaws; woukd like something related to the officials call to keep their 'power' rather than reliance on tech solely

Edited by UniFox21
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4 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

 

 

 

 

This is quite a nice idea, gives that benefit of the doubt and stops the 1mm offside being given. But this still has flaws; woukd like something related to the officials call to keep their 'power' rather than reliance on tech solely

 

And when someone is 1mm offside beyond the yellow line you'll get the exact same complaints again.

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2 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

 

 

 

 

This is quite a nice idea, gives that benefit of the doubt and stops the 1mm offside being given 

 

My problem with that is a) the attacker in that diagram is offside, simple as, so why not just give it offside? And b) you're still giving decisions by very small margins, but now you're giving him offside because he's 1mm ahead of the thick line rather than 1mm ahead of the defender, or onside if he's 1mm inside it. It's the same with "daylight" - if you're still looking for 1mm of daylight to give someone offside then what's actually changed? I don't see the point in looking for ways to give attackers the benefit of doubt within a system designed to remove doubt from offside decisions altogether.

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37 minutes ago, Guest said:

My problem with that is a) the attacker in that diagram is offside, simple as, so why not just give it offside? And b) you're still giving decisions by very small margins, but now you're giving him offside because he's 1mm ahead of the thick line rather than 1mm ahead of the defender, or onside if he's 1mm inside it. It's the same with "daylight" - if you're still looking for 1mm of daylight to give someone offside then what's actually changed? I don't see the point in looking for ways to give attackers the benefit of doubt within a system designed to remove doubt from offside decisions altogether.

 

39 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

 

And when someone is 1mm offside beyond the yellow line you'll get the exact same complaints again.

you're both right.

people were calling for accuracy in decisions for years. They finally get it and it's too accurate 

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