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Totally Unofficial 2023/24 Premier League Thread

They've missed so many obvious things over the years that I don't know that I want to totally scrap any recourse a team/manager might have at this point, but something with its implementation needs to be fixed for sure, and I think I'd be more down with what someone (Townie? maybe?) suggested before, which is an entirely independent VAR operation. Automated for offsides/out of play seems like a definite must at this point. But then I thought the non-call on Turner/Wissa yesterday was terrible, too, and should have been right up VAR's alley, but guess not.
 
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I don't see a conspiracy here but the level of incompetence in this instance is staggering. VAR to me improves the game and had it been applied with any reasonable level of competence by Darren England or the VAR assistant, would have overturned a clear and obvious error by the linesman.

To me, there are two unforgivable errors by England and his VAR assistant. First, there is no excuse for not paying close enough attention to the game to miss what the on field call was in real time. Second, the moment that you realized your mistake, just a little bit of courage would have been enough to instruct Simon Hooper to stop the game and allow for the goal. We're talking 5 seconds after the restart. They would have been forgiven for ignoring that protocol.

Refereeing at this level is a very difficult job and I accept that on field errors are going to happen and impact every team at some point. Which is why VAR is a valuable tool when applied with any decent level of competence. Yes, there will still be human error from the VAR, but it's going to be hard to top this one.
 
haha I was first on him from his time with the United's U18s, Townie. Don't even try to slip in front of me for McKenna!
 
Def some Championship guys I'm interested in: Schumacher at Plymouth Argyle and (former Argyle man) Ryan Lowe at PNE, as well as Rosenior at Hull, I think. Prob one or two others.

Couple guys abroad, too: Will Still at Reims and Tuchel's assistant at Bayern, Anthony Barry -- for English guys, anyway.

Who knows how they all shake out. Most of the time these guys I get focused on get found out: *real quick.
 
I don’t know who this lady is, but thought this thread had some good perspective on the concept of VAR. From a couple years ago, so maybe posted at some point, dunno.

 
It is interesting how serious of a problem this becomes when Liverpool gets screwed. The sky certainly wasn't falling when Arsenal was on the short end of a PGMOL mistake.
 
How to solve everything with 8 changes to VAR

1) Release the audio: Making conversations between on-pitch and VAR officials public would at least add a layer of transparency and go some way to warding off the increasing hoards of tinfoil-hat-wearing referees-all-hate-my-club conspiracy theorists. No more: “What were they thinking?!” because we’d know, whether we liked it or not. Or we could just bin it all off completely.

2) Allow officials to call back play once restarted: This seems pretty obvious. Had the officials at Spurs, who realised their mistake within seconds, felt able to pull play back from something as sacrosanct as – checks notes – a Tottenham free-kick, then your tea-timely email wouldn’t be banging on about all this. Or we could just bin it all off completely.

3) Semi-automated offside technology: This has worked just fine elsewhere and though it would not have made a difference in north London, it would speed things up for the oft-forgotten fans actually paying to be in the ground: Ansu Fati’s goal for Brighton at Villa Park on Saturday took well over two minutes of VAR checking for offside. Or we could, you know, just bin it all off completely.

4) No stills of incidents on pitchside monitor: The image of Curtis Jones’s tackle on Yves Bissouma made the challenge look awful. But then static images at the point of contact always make incidents look worse. When referees are already looking at footage distorted by slow-motion, still images are unhelpful at best and misleading at worst. Just show the footage. Or maybe just bin it all off completely.

5) Get former players involved: A few ex-pros down at Stockley Park might help with incidents such as the Jones tackle, where a referee sees a bone-crunching studs-up red and a former player might see an unfortunate attempt-to-nick-the-ball-away yellow. How about some sort of VAR-based national service for players? Play 100 Premier League games? That’s 10 turns in the VAR booth once you retire. Or alternatively we could just bin it all off completely.

6) Managerial challenge system: Give managers two opportunities each half to get a VAR look at a decision. Goal against you stood when it shouldn’t? That’s on you. Time to upgrade your dugout refereeing decision analysis team. Or perhaps we could just bin it all off completely.

7) Stop penalising players for trying to play on: Brentford’s Yoane Wissa was a victim of this on Sunday when hoofed into the east Midlands air by Forest goalkeeper Matt Turner. Players shouldn’t need to throw themselves to the turf and roll around in mock-agony for VAR to award a decision. So maybe we should just bin it all off completely.

8) Go Swedish: Over the years Sweden has given the world a stack of great innovations – seatbelts, zips, Bluetooth, pacemakers, milk cartons and the adjustable spanner to name but a few. These days the Allsvenskan is innovating by not innovating – it’s the last major European men’s top-flight division to hold out against video assistant referees. So when it comes to VAR perhaps we can take a leaf from the book of a country smart enough to give the world both dynamite and safety matches. AKA binning it off completely.
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1-4 and 7 should be no brainers. 5 is a horrendous idea for obvious reasons. 6 is an Americanized solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist in soccer but would if you tried to implement it (that being why should it be on coaches to challenge bad officiating, just fix the issues either live or with replay).

8 is never going to happen and I'm glad. I am very pro-VAR, I am just very anti-PGMOL and FA implementation of it. VAR has worked very well when used how it should be, and 1-4 and 7 would go a long way towards benefitting the system. But the battle is with PGMOL and egos being hurt, not with VAR itself. Common sense changes resolve 90% of VAR issues and the other 10% no one will agree on anyway so just have to accept it.
 
deacvision7 said:
Liverpool supporters continue to be the biggest victims in the world.

At least in their own minds.

Worst supporter base on the planet.
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Interesting use of the word "victims" here. I'm assuming that you know how this word gets thrown around in connection to Liverpool fans, but perhaps you didn't put two and two together.

In real news, Gakop injury wasn't as bad as feared. LFC appealed the Jones red card, but I can't see anything getting overturned. Guess we will see Gravenberch and Endo a bit more over the coming weeks. Bajcetic and Thiago continue to be made of glass.

With VAR, you would think a super simple fix would be to require the officials who are involved to clearly communicate what is being reviewed. Something like "VAR is reviewing the decision to not count the goal for an offsides call. The offsides call is being reviewed."
 
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fuheel said:
With VAR, you would think a super simple fix would be to require the officials who are involved to clearly communicate what is being reviewed. Something like "VAR is reviewing the decision to not count the goal for an offsides call. The offsides call is being reviewed."
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They made a big deal about this being the case on the Fulham-Chelsea broadcast today.

It’s funny, every other club in the division has tales for days about PGMOL and getting robbed of decisions (apart from Man United, dv7 the only pure of heart among us). But Liverpool machine starts up in the press and less than 48 hrs later the officials have changed their protocols. I don’t remember that happening when PGMOL issued 2 apologies in the first three matches to Everton. 15 apologies in the first 5 match weeks in fact, but Liverpool aggrieved means we must do something!
 
dv7 is going to be very offended that you’d suggest he used victims toward Liverpool supporters in any sort of way
 
Bin it, IMO.

At the very least, reduce the number of reviews. I.e. let the ref ask for a booth review if they feel like they didn't get a good look at something. I can't stand the "drawn lines" version of offsides where, without any difference in advantage, a player's toe or shoulder being here instead of there is the difference in play being called back or a goal being taken off the board. And for fuck's sake, stop automatically reviewing goals just to look for some reason to take it away. Goals are fun. We should have more of them. And when they happen, we should feel able to celebrate them without fear of auto review finding that something happened in the buildup that would otherwise not be called, i.e. a marginal offsides eight passes ago that becomes offsides conditional on the otherwise exciting event of a goal occurring.

Imagine if every time a home run was hit in baseball, we had a video review to see if the player's toe slid over a line in the batter's box, only to have it called back 15% of the time. Ridiculous.

Do we complain about refereeing any less now than we did before? No.

tl;dr: I hate VAR (and I acknowledge that it's helped Spurs in the past on notable occasions).
 
Hell yes well said. It has not materially improved the game, time to go.
 
fuheel said:
What about the auto-offside rule they used at the WC?
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My opinion on offsides is that the advantage should go to the attacker. If a player's body is clearly visually beyond the bodies of the defenders when the ball is played, fine, call it back. If it's tight, let it go.

Soccer, like hockey (and other low-scoring sports), comes down to a few extremely influential events per game. We should do whatever possible to keep our grubby fingers off those events unless literal cheating occurred.
 
fuheel said:
. LFC appealed the Jones red card, but I can't see anything getting overturned. Guess we will see Gravenberch and Endo a bit more over the coming weeks. Bajcetic and Thiago continue to be made of glass.
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no idea if it will work, but I believe the appeal is regarding the review being handled improperly. Apparently the ref is supposed to be shown real time except for in some exceptions for facts, like positioning or handballs. The post I saw of the rule didn’t mention showing the on field ref a still first, and I’m certainly not a var lawyer.

LFC also asked for the audio to be released on the Diaz offside ruling.
 
It was funny how the on field official clearly has the still there for him on the Jones tackle, like here you go boss, here’s the decision for ya.
 
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