I think ‘awful’ is stretching it. He made the bad mistake against Saints, and after that he was OK. The team protected him and limited how much he was exposed.
He had no chance to save those 2 goals other than by blind luck the shot and the header were at point blank range. You are as good as the guys in front of you as soon as VVD went off the bombardment in our area started and CL didn’t need to jump the full height of Robbo to score really had Vvd been there to mark him I’m sure that header would have gone over the bar
I’m not saying it was a mistake. Just making the point that he didn’t save it He didn’t command his box yesterday (never does) but on the Keane goal not many keepers save that. I agree the issue was allowing Keane to have a free header 6 yards out.
The more time that passes, the more I am settling in on the idea that this decision on the Pickford tackle can be explained by the blind spot refs have with dangerous challenges from keepers. For decades they have been given more leeway because by throwing themselves at the feet of an attacker they are putting their own body on the line, but increasingly we have seen keepers use their bodies as a weapon and nothing gets done about it.
Even if you get to the ball first, you can still be called for serious foul play if your action puts the opponent at risk in a way they can do nothing to prevent. For some reason though, refs seem to forget to apply this rubric for aerial challenges and with keepers. How many times have we seen Ederson launch himself at the attacker and take them out and nothing be done? I remember one game last season, I think Southampton, where their striker had to go off injured because he was clattered late, and all that was given was a goal kick. Yet it wasn’t even really discussed by the commentary team because it is this collective blind spot that exists about player safety.
I think it is possible the refs got so caught up in a series of mental differentials over other issues on the play that they forgot to think about the tackle itself. But I think the more likely explanation is they looked at it and didn’t think twice because to them keepers can do that sort of challenge.
There is no excusing VAR on this. But as I said yesterday, that should also not give Oliver a way out either. It was a late, knee high, two footed, scissoring lunge that occurred exactly where the ball was and where the ref was looking. This is not an issue of visually missing it, it is simply cognitively fucking it up. I’ve given my interpretation of that above.
The implementation of a computer system to judge offsides has eliminated from consideration two terms many of us grew up with - “benefit of the doubt goes to the attacker” and “level is onside”. We now have the “computer says no” lady doing the assessment and the approach is to just accept whatever the computer spits out as the answer without consideration of the amount of error that exists in the numerous inputs that go into the determination the computer makes.
Years ago I was at a scientific conference where a guy was presenting data on something that produced a fairly controversial conclusion. Within his data was an average that based on his reported standard deviation (how wide a range of values were included in the calculation of the average) had to have included measurements on the low end that are not physiologically possible. This is something that should have been detected by a B standard undergrad, yet he and his team just accepted what ever his instrument spat out. And this is who we have running the offside decisions for VAR. There is error inherent in how it is decided when the ball has been played. There is error in the selection (by humans) of the various bodily landmarks they place. But from there, the computer spits out an answer and regardless of how close the decision is, they ignore all that measurement error and just say “computer says no.” Significant doubt still exists in these decisions within the space of these various, sometimes compounding, measurement errors, and yet we pretend because it is computer there is no longer any doubt to be given.
What an awful outcome for the Derby to end in this way. Everton players were not playing football, it was thuggery. .
I was feeling really down about the incidents regarding Thiago, Virgil and Hendo.
However, I remember one of Klopp’s quotes, ‘when there are problems, we will find the solutions’ and I am sure the bootroom staff are working on ways to manage without Virgil for a while. I hope Virgil is not out for too long.
We all have to stay positive and if we can cope until after Christmas period and get through the matches, we will get through this difficult phase in the season. Other clubs will drop points too. Playing a match every 2-3 days will be brutal and we do have a bigger squad than a lot of the EPL clubs lower down than us, so that is a plus point.
We are still Champions of England an no one can take that away from us.
I think a few people are developing a bit of a blind spot around Adrian and it’s getting a bit binary. I’ve seen loads of this sort thought; ‘our strikers should have put the game beyond them’ or ‘they shouldn’t have played that pass as he’s not Alisson’ or ‘no keeper saves that’ even though a better reaction time and positioning means one would have.
At the end of the day we don’t play with a vacuum between the posts and your keeper also needs to be bailing you out otherwise whats the point? His save percentage is piss poor and his errors leading to goals are as high as fuck. At this point he’ll have to fuck it up royally in a crucial CL tie in order to get called out compl… oh, wait.
He should have tipped it over the bar as a routine save. His effort was dreadful. It was an error of judgement that caused a goal. He made a couple of decent stops, but the Keane goal was on Adrian.
With regards to michael oliver, ignoring the occasions when he might have been let down by VAR, there were numerous occasions where he simply failed to apply the laws correctly, and simply turned a blind eye to the blueshite’s misdemeanours.
Take for example the free kick following the high foot on Mane.
Law 13: Free Kicks states:
Until the ball is in play all opponents must remain:
at least 9.15 m (10 yds) from the ball, unless they are on their own goal line between the goalposts
It also states: If, when a free kick is taken, an opponent is closer to the ball than the required distance, the kick is retaken unless the advantage can be applied.
So why did oliver allow the free kick to proceed when all bar one of the blueshite were standing in front of his line i.e. less than 10 yards away; why didn’t he have the free kick retaken?
What is point of spraying a line if he then permits players to ignore it?
Why did he ignore Matip and Mo when they pointed out that the blueshite were less than 10 yards from the ball?
What is oliver’s problem? Shortsighted? Incompetent? Biased? All three?
That is always going to happen when a large segment of the group develops a pile on mentality and reflexively blames one player for everything.
Alison demanded a world record fee in part because every once in a while he makes saves he’s got no right to make. You can make a claim that Adrian doesn’t make those saves often enough to deserve to be at a club like Liverpool, but I think it’s a very open question as to whether the back up keeper at any club does. What is happening here though is a separate issue. What should not happen is for any single case of a goal being scored that we cant reasonably demand the keeper save resulting in cries that he’s not good enough. Yet Adrian gets that all that time, such as yesterday. If you allow the opposition players to get shots on target from inside the 6 yard box, it is going to be a goal the overwhelming majority of times.