OoooOoo /Shudder VAR Thread

Because VAR is controlled by humans who will make the ultimate decision. The technology has nothing to do with it. A player could be a yard offside (a bit extreme I know) but if the ref in the VAR room gives him onside then he’s onside.
There’ll always be dubious decisions until it’s all done automatically by machines/computers. Like Goal-line Technology or Hawkeye in tennis. :nerd_face:

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Just mtly addition to your contention!

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Seems like there’s plenty of managers having an issue with VAR when we aren’t even involved in the games. Almost as if there isn’t a conspiracy against us and there is just incompetent officials using the technology.

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Almost as if the people who have an incentive to complain about VAR when their team doesn’t do well are having an issue with VAR when their team isn’t doing well?

There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, could be simple bias.

No arguments there, completely mind-blowing how bad they are.

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What explains the media being so bad at the analysis and commentary on the issues though? We know we should take post-game comments from managers and players with a huge pinch of salt, but what we often see is the pundits sustain controversy with a display of flagrant lack of knowledge and/or regard for what the rules or VAR protocols are.

Take this one from Murphy about the one of the Leeds penalties not given

The VAR protocol is to give refs a second chance at a decision in cases where they got something factually incorrect…where their description of the incident does not match what the replay shows.

Example
Virgil’s yellow - If in the ref’s judgement Virgil did not make contact with enough force to justify a red despite making contact above the ankle, then the cause of debate is not over the fact of the incident, but the judgement call on what is excessive force. No mater what the person in the VAR booth thinks the correct decision should have been, they have no room to interject

The overturned penalty in the west ham-spurs game in midweek - The ball struck the outstretched hand of a west ham player and the ref gave a penalty. The replays showed it first hit the player in the face and rebounded to his arm. In describing to the VAR what he saw in coming to his decision the ref ommitted it coming of the player’s face. Therefore VAR intervenes. Not to say “this is a penalty” but to say “what you saw is incorrect, you need to get the facts right and then make your decision.”

What Murphy is asking for is to just placate a manager by adding an unnecessary delay to a game for the ref to go and watch replays of an incident the VAR already knows he saw correctly. On the one side of their face the pundits are complaining about the Minimum interference-maximum benefit standard not being maintained and then on the other they are asking for this sort of needless intervention that causes delays with no change in the decision. Shearer is treating the ref in the Forrest game (?) declining to change his decision as a virtue in itself when it isnt. The VAR protocol means the odds are stacked against a ref sustaining his original decision when being asked to go to the monitor. Why? Well, because by definition it means they made their original decision without the full set of facts at hand. And you know for sure that if we started seeing more VAR reviews resulting in sustained decisions these same fucks would start complaining that its just a waste of time and causing unneccesary delays.

What you never see in these analyses is a break down of why people come to the opinion they do on these judgement calls. You think it is a foul, but why? Just stating your opinion is not an argument, but yet all we get is one pundit saying its a pen and another saying it isn’t. Great discussion, fuckos. You’ve really provided illumination.

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For me, I apply Hanlon’s razor. Most of the pundits seem to be there literally because they’re ex-players and are familiar to the viewing public, rather than because they have actual expertise or insight into the game.

Thanks for raising that, I was wondering what you thought about that. Personally, when I saw that, I thought he was going to be off, but then again I thought the same about the incident earlier in the match when one of their players made similar contact with I think it was Diaz?

Murphy is an idiot, and like most other pundits, they don’t seem to have any performance-related factors for why they get selected to comment on particular matches.

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I had my heart in my mouth over the Virgil incident. Rationally I knew these tend to not get overturned by VAR because they really do hinge on a judgement call of what is excessive force, and so we see incidents every week (usually from McTominay) of borderline challenges ignored by VAR regardless of what the original decision is. But my stomach was in knots over it.

Interestingly I was reading the other day that this season in the Bundesliga they are making room for the ref to be instructed to “just go and have another look”. I’d be interested in how that works, as the reason this hasnt been the approach up until now is the desire to minimize the amount of unnecessary delays. Also, there has been a lot of frustration with the PL for their decisions in prior season to implement their own protocols for VAR that deviated from IFAB’s (I think it was their protocol). I’d be interested if German football gets the same blowback we did for charting their own course.

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I’m not sure what the point of a review is. Not exactly going to change the outcome. I thought the Newcastle and West Ham decisions were terrible yesterday. It’s like the decisions are being made by people who’ve never watched a game of football.

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If they weren’t doing retrospectives every week to go over how major incidents were handled I’d be incredibly disappointed. That is a fundamental part of both fine tuning an organizations process and getting people better at following it correctly. If this is unusual as this reporting suggests then that in itself is seemingly part of the problem.

What is interesting is that Coutinho incident is absent from every one of these pieces about the perception of how badly VAR worked over the weekend. If you want a conspiracy, then putting the focus on VAR as the problem to divert attention from a non-VAR related fuck up is a good one :see_no_evil:

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Isn’t PGMOL just a terribly-run organisation to begin with? I remember reading an article last season about how referees from minority backgrounds just don’t get a chance, and that it’s a very ossified culture.

With that as my prior, that they’re thoroughly reactive is just feeding my confirmation.

Aye, if its part of English football suited institutions then my default is also that it is terribly run and self-serving.

I don’t know if they have regular reviews. The way this review is reported as taking place as a ‘matter of priority’ suggests not. There seems to be more VAR interference this season than ever before. I thought having refs dedicated to VAR was meant to improve the decision making process but it’s made it worse. Lee Mason was a shit ref and now he’s a shit full-time VAR. Who’d have guessed it?

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I wonder without VAR as some are clamouring it would get far worse.

I think it would, some utter shoddy decisions.

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The Martinelli VAR disallowed goal.

Penandes led the huge swarm around the ref straight after the goal. Then VAR says to ref to have a look at the foul before the goal.

That swarm around the useless Tierney has had the desired effect - with VAR recommending to watch again, Tierney was always going to be influenced by it and overturn the decision with the pressure applied.

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With Virg it could have gone either way but the crux is " using excessive force" and the fact that he was on his feet and in control would/ should be a deciding factor, so we could call it a mistimed tackle

The Coutinho incident was a fuck up by linesman and referee.
We are aware, as in other incidents this season that VAR cannot intervene…

The big question in this instance is ‘Why’

Looks more accurate

Hmm how does VAR feel pressured by the players swarming the ref or was it sarcasm?

Precisely. It’s a common complaint but ignores that it’s not the ref who determines if an on field review of the screen is justified.