VAR

[FOXSE]

6 hours ago, Royston. said:

What an embarrassing mess.

 

The game was crying out for VAR but now I reckon the majority would rather go back to the way it was.

 

Why is the best(richest) league in the world managed this way?

 

 

Corruption.

[Dahnsouff]

There is nothing wrong with VAR in theory, just the gimps running it.

To say VAR is bad is like saying democracy is bad, but in reality it’s because of the feckless, self-serving  implementers - isn’t that right <insert Conservative politician name>?

[Noahfence]

Been a real joy watching championship football with no VAR

[worth_the_wait]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

There is nothing wrong with VAR in theory, just the gimps running it.

Yes there is.

VAR is football's version of horse racing's Stewards Enquiry.   ie after the event (for some unspecified period of time ... up to several minutes) , try and find something wrong with what happened.

It has destroyed the spontaneity of the greatest game on Earth.

 

 

[Lionator]

46 minutes ago, Noahfence said:

Been a real joy watching championship football with no VAR

I’m tempting fate a bit here but have we even had any controversial decisions for or against us this season? I know the Sunderland home game was a poor show by the ref but there was nothing terribly awful. 

[Dahnsouff]

3 minutes ago, worth_the_wait said:

Yes there is.

VAR is football's version of horse racing's Stewards Enquiry.   ie after the event (for some unspecified period of time ... up to several minutes) , try and find something wrong with what happened.

It has destroyed the spontaneity of the greatest game on Earth.

There isn't, the fact it isn't instant is the problem in your example.

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

There isn't, the fact it isn't instant is the problem in your example.

This.

 

It is possible for such a system to improve to a point where such decisions are (at least near) instantaneous and therefore as fast as a human referee giving a decision and more accurate.

 

We just haven't got there yet, which is why some Luddites are advocating for throwing out the baby with the bathwater rather than going back to the drawing board and sorting the system out (which is what should be done).

[Dunge]

Question: Let’s imagine for a moment that VAR will eventually reach the point of being both accurate and near-instantaneous, presumably through AI. Which it won’t, but let’s imagine it will.

 

Why do we have to put up with it during development? Why can’t we just scrap it and wait only for the finished product?

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, Dunge said:

Question: Let’s imagine for a moment that VAR will eventually reach the point of being both accurate and near-instantaneous, presumably through AI. Which it won’t, but let’s imagine it will.

 

Why do we have to put up with it during development? Why can’t we just scrap it and wait only for the finished product?

Tbh we shouldn't have to. If it's not better in terms of speed and accuracy than a human agency (which in terms of the former it certainly is not) then it shouldn't be implemented until it is.

 

Edit: and yes, such systems will be a fast as a human agency one day. And that day will be soon. Tech advancement moves at a massive speed, often unexpectedly.

Edited 26 December 2023 by leicsmac

[Chelmofox]

11 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

This.

 

It is possible for such a system to improve to a point where such decisions are (at least near) instantaneous and therefore as fast as a human referee giving a decision and more accurate.

 

We just haven't got there yet, which is why some Luddites are advocating for throwing out the baby with the bathwater rather than going back to the drawing board and sorting the system out (which is what should be done).

We are never going to get to the position where possible red card moments or borderline handballs are going to be instantaneous. AI would have to be trained on every possible scenario and there will always have to be some interpretation. As we have seen with generative ai, its all too happy just to make stuff up when it doesn't understand, so in these instances there would have to be involvement and as these moments are always subjective, there is always going to be the arguing we have today. 

 

Personally, have the instant offside tech (nobody can still adequately explain to me why we don't have this now in the PL) and goalline stuff and scrap everything else.  I would actually prefer much tougher decisions on players post match. If players received more bans for that second yellow they didn't get on the field, or received retrospective bans for simulating or out of site behaviour, then i think that would actually go a long way to cleaning up the game,

 

 

[worth_the_wait]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

There isn't, the fact it isn't instant is the problem in your example.

It's never going to be instantaneous, is it?

 

I bet you any amount of money, that in 20 years time, we will still be waiting several minutes over decisions of opinion and interpretation.

[Pliskin]

Slightly controversial opinion, but I actually miss it…. 

[Dahnsouff]

Just now, worth_the_wait said:

It's never going to be instantaneous, is it?

 

I bet you any amount of money, that in 20 years time, we will still be waiting several minutes over decisions of opinion and interpretation.

The job of Stockley park should be little more than to communicate the instant results of offside / fouls / etc to the on field ref to take the appropriate action, and I simple cannot believe that if a serious attempt to make this an AI driven instantaneous assistant was made, just as it has show it can be made to work for such high speed sport in Tennis with Hawkeye, that it would not be possible.

I mean with all the camera and tracking tech now,  then we must be regressing, but as with all such endeavours, it the WILL to do it that prevents its success.

You could argue that a capacity to allow muddied conclusions gives the governing bodies the ability to direct results as best suits the business requirements.

[Chelmofox]

8 minutes ago, worth_the_wait said:

It's never going to be instantaneous, is it?

 

I bet you any amount of money, that in 20 years time, we will still be waiting several minutes over decisions of opinion and interpretation.

Unless we build true AI (not the existing Generative stuff, and not ML modelling) that we give the authority to make interpretive decisions on our behalf, then the decisions will not be instantaneous. The problem you will have is that ML will need to be trained on a huge variety of scenarios based on the the rules, and whilst there is the opportunity for the machine to make the wrong decision (because a scenario is introduced its not been trained on, or the rule of the game has an interpretive angle) the 'demand' will be for people to step in.

 

Thing is, if we build that true AI, decisions on the football pitch will be the least of our worries.

[leicsmac]

14 minutes ago, Chelmofox said:

We are never going to get to the position where possible red card moments or borderline handballs are going to be instantaneous. AI would have to be trained on every possible scenario and there will always have to be some interpretation. As we have seen with generative ai, its all too happy just to make stuff up when it doesn't understand, so in these instances there would have to be involvement and as these moments are always subjective, there is always going to be the arguing we have today. 

 

Personally, have the instant offside tech (nobody can still adequately explain to me why we don't have this now in the PL) and goalline stuff and scrap everything else.  I would actually prefer much tougher decisions on players post match. If players received more bans for that second yellow they didn't get on the field, or received retrospective bans for simulating or out of site behaviour, then i think that would actually go a long way to cleaning up the game,

 

 

Fifteen years ago smartphones were a device either not yet conceived or only available to the superrich in the most primitive format.

Thirty years ago the Internet was pretty much exclusively the province of computer nerds, academic institutions or the military.

 

There are many other such examples, but the point is that "never" is a very long time in matters of tech.

 

But yes, such decisions may well still be a significant distance away in terms of time, so for the time being it should only be goalline and the instant offside tech being implemented until the other stuff is proven to work much better, and I also agree that post-match citing would be a good idea too.

[ARM1968]

4 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

The job of Stockley park should be little more than to communicate the instant results of offside / fouls / etc to the on field ref to take the appropriate action, and I simple cannot believe that if a serious attempt to make this an AI driven instantaneous assistant was made, just as it has show it can be made to work for such high speed sport in Tennis with Hawkeye, that it would not be possible.

I mean with all the camera and tracking tech now,  then we must be regressing, but as with all such endeavours, it the WILL to do it that prevents its success.

You could argue that a capacity to allow muddied conclusions gives the governing bodies the ability to direct results as best suits the business requirements.

Thing is with Hawkeye, the ball is either in or it’s out. It’s not like that with football. Way too many variables and much is open to interpretation as the human element cannot easily be removed. For Ai to work you would have to have a set of pretty much set in stone rules and guidelines for it to work from, and football isn’t like that. Offside yes, ball crossing the line yes - everything else no. 

[Dahnsouff]

3 minutes ago, ARM1968 said:

Thing is with Hawkeye, the ball is either in or it’s out. It’s not like that with football. Way too many variables and much is open to interpretation as the human element cannot easily be removed. For Ai to work you would have to have a set of pretty much set in stone rules and guidelines for it to work from, and football isn’t like that. Offside yes, ball crossing the line yes - everything else no. 

For sure, but offsides take forever right now, for that there is no excuse

[Royston.]

4 hours ago, FOXSE said:

Corruption.

Thank you.

 

Tin foil hat but I'd go as far to say they deliberately make highly controversial decisions in games that don't involve the mega rich 7 just to even out the corruption and take attention away from other VAR corruption.

[BKLFox]

31 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

For sure, but offsides take forever right now, for that there is no excuse

They certainly do, over 20 seconds in our game v Rotherham but How does Ai speed up throw-ins, free kicks etc do you put criteria in that says if once ball is out and throw not taken within this set time advise ref to give a yellow card or overturn a decision or what ever?

But Ai can only see things within these set parameters it can’t see that the ball has taken its time to get back to player taking the throw or if the throws delayed because someone has gone down etc etc in the same way that it can’t see why a player has reacted to something and lashed out at another player, you still need the human and dare I say common sense approach applied to decisions, Ai is yes/no which doesn’t fit all.

[Dahnsouff]

4 minutes ago, BKLFox said:

They certainly do, over 20 seconds in our game v Rotherham but How does Ai speed up throw-ins, free kicks etc do you put criteria in that says if once ball is out and throw not taken within this set time advise ref to give a yellow card or overturn a decision or what ever?

But Ai can only see things within these set parameters it can’t see that the ball has taken its time to get back to player taking the throw or if the throws delayed because someone has gone down etc etc in the same way that it can’t see why a player has reacted to something and lashed out at another player, you still need the human and dare I say common sense approach applied to decisions, Ai is yes/no which doesn’t fit all.

And neither should it, AI is useless at situations with human variance, it has to be restricted to things that have binary outcomes, simplistic situations. Advertising this limitation is a key part of any VAR usability.

[davieG]

Even if they got to an instantaneous point which which would require many video angles could any club below the top tier leagues afford it. 

[Dahnsouff]

Just now, davieG said:

Even if they got to an instantaneous point which which would require many video angles could any club below the top tier leagues afford it. 

No. It would further divide the have and have nots.

[Robo61]

3 hours ago, Lionator said:

I’m tempting fate a bit here but have we even had any controversial decisions for or against us this season? I know the Sunderland home game was a poor show by the ref but there was nothing terribly awful. 

Not sure we are a position to know as TV does not replay and examine over every little incident as they do in the PL,  thankfully. 

 

Edited 26 December 2023 by Robo61

[FOXSE]

28 minutes ago, Royston. said:

Thank you.

 

Tin foil hat but I'd go as far to say they deliberately make highly controversial decisions in games that don't involve the mega rich 7 just to even out the corruption and take attention away from other VAR corruption.

In the past the refs could just say 'didn't see it', now it takes a bit of time working out what they can get away with.

 

The reason I think it's deliberate is any football fan plucked at random would do a better job. And that shouldn't be the case...

 

I think they want VAR gone so they can go back to the good old days of just favouring the big boys.

[Chelmofox]

48 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Fifteen years ago smartphones were a device either not yet conceived or only available to the superrich in the most primitive format.

Thirty years ago the Internet was pretty much exclusively the province of computer nerds, academic institutions or the military.

 

There are many other such examples, but the point is that "never" is a very long time in matters of tech.

 

But yes, such decisions may well still be a significant distance away in terms of time, so for the time being it should only be goalline and the instant offside tech being implemented until the other stuff is proven to work much better, and I also agree that post-match citing would be a good idea too.

I suppose i mean 'never' under the Stockley Park regime.  The miniaturisation of Tech and the implementation of AI are 2 different streams (although, i argue the smartphone hasn't changed much in the last 5 years).  AI to interpret law, rules and individual intent in sport is another step change beyond the capabilities of those implementing VAR. I mean, these are people who seem to 'get off' drawing sh1tty lines on a graining video to determine offside when the technology already exists to do it in near real time. How would they deal with a machine that tells them to send off Man City players when they do one of their early cynical fouls on a counter attacking team because it understands what the player did better than they do.

 

If one of the tech giants does implement an AI that can judge rules/law based on its understanding of the situation (intelligence, not inferring from trained models), and can accurately determine a player should be sent off for foul play instantly, or that handball was intentional, then the technology should be implemented in far more places than just football.  Football won't be driving that technology.

 

My frustration is the VAR team should use what is available to implement quick decisions where next to no interpretative information is needed (offside is one of these), and then all the information they have could be used for retrospective punishments leaving the on pitch officials to judge the game the best way they can. Promising that 'one day' it all might come good isn't right imho, we shouldn't be waiting several minutes for an offside decision in 2023/4. 

 

Also, am i the only one who thinks its rubbish that VAR officials manage their part of the game off site in Stockley Park? I've always felt that those officiating the game should work as a team and manage the game together.  I don't understand why they can't do their bit from a dedicated room at the ground, and physically interact with the on pitch officials pre match, at half time and for the match retrospective. Technology or no technology, good communication is always key.