Just to play devil’s advocate the theory put forward was that City have felt threatened by us after the last two years so there’s a potential that an organisation with clear history of corruption and intimidation have, this season, used that to help hold us back. Not sure I agree but there is a possibility and none of what you said is relevant to that.
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Oh and it’s ridiculous to claim its the system. We sit there looking at the replays spotting the mistakes. We see the mistakes in real time. VAR works all over the place. It’s only in England that it’s the unmitigated disaster that clearly favours a handful of teams, hits/misses most of the other teams and absolutely robs us so blind it’s starting to get picked up on by neutrals.
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The problem with VAR is that it allows whichever shit/incompetent ref to manipulate the system towards the decision they want. They choose the frame to pause the system on, the choose where on the arm to draw the line etc.
What VAR does very, very well is add a veneer of pseudo-objectivity to these decisions. Same shit refs. Same shit decisions. But now it doesn’t set talked about because VAR is supposedly scientific and impartial.
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The fact that it has quite clearly got significantly worse this year as well. It was inconsistent last year and showed up that many refs clearly didn’t know the rules properly and it did still hurt us slightly more than others but generally mistakes seemed reasonable by and large. This season its gone into overdrive and it doesn’t help they won’t admit to mistakes. They’ve turned into politicians, even when you confront them with the laws of the game and how the decision is wrong they clam up then some rule will change not long after. Rules have changed during the season so often this year. It’s unprecedented and means some teams have benefited or been robbed by decisions everyone knew were wrong for them to then change so nobody else gets to benefit or be harmed by that rule. It’s a very unfair playing field. And the two Manchester clubs have benefited far more than any other team in these situations by quite a long way. We’ve also been wronged by these decisions more than any other team also by quite a long way.
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For me personally it feels like they’re using VAR as another tool to rub in everyone’s faces just how blatantly corrupt they are. Some of the decisions are straight mockery. Not just in our games, the PL in general. It fucking stinks.
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I’m missing the WBA points and though the Newcastle one is a penalty it’s hardly spottable until someone points it out.
Everton and Brighton were clear to me, Leicester’s offside was also dubious but let’s make Clear distinctions between those that are a bit 50/50.
VAR is fucking a fair few clubs over with those lines, something I’ve not seen in other leagues. I can’t even remember the WBA one.
But it’s not VAR itself, I’ve seen some leagues use it very well, though some leagues seem obsessed with ruling this stuff out.
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Not sure anything good can come from this slump of ours at the moment. With a real concern about achieving top four becoming a serious threat at the halfway point of the season, it might get the owners sitting up to attention, injuries aside, as to why we are in this predicament. The slump when analysed, might bring real focus upon the incompetent or biased officiating we have endured. Maybe then, the big guns of John Henry may bring whatever pressure to bear that they can, upon the hand wringing ‘uriah heap’ stature of Mike Riley in his appeasement to old whiskey nose or Sniffers Cheaty owners.!
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Against WBA, Fabinho was fouled during their goal. The Leicester first was clearly offside, Mane was fouled at Leciester in the build up to their second. At Newcastle that’s what VAR is for, they just conveniently miss things that benefit us.
VAR isn’t fucking Man City over.
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The number of early bookings tactic against Liverpool players is becoming a serious concern…
It is as though Mike Riley, with his duplicity, is using every tool at his disposal to prevent us ever going on a magical run like last season, not only to monopolise his product, but to prevent it from appearing we did it in a sub-standard league of his…
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Sorry but the foul was nothing, Leicester I didn’t mention and Newcastle you’ve just passed over.
I want obvious errors Everton and Brighton and Leicester to an extent where then again the latter we played into our own downfall, how many free kicks did they want to give in pretty much the same position as for Alison and Kabak.
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Nobody said there weren’t other factors at play. But you clearly won’t accept that we’re being ref’d differently to Man City so there is no point carrying on with this.
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Mo Salah illegally pushed off the ball against Fulham, allowing them to score.
Mo Salah absolutely cleaned out for a pen against Villa at 2-1. Not given.
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Never said that, I’ve pointed out where I agree and where I don’t. Didn’t mention Man City.
I’m sure you could go through all our matches and find a fair bit of WTF but the same goes for last season.
I’m going get angry over offsides that are dubious but appealing stuff that could be a foul with one ref and not another isn’t going be something to change.
Pickford’s foul not withstanding
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There is a general consensus that Liverpool walking the league last year was not good for the ‘brand’ or ‘product’. But with the ref’s working together to make sure that doesn’t happen again, the ‘product’ they are now serving up is absolute dogs bollocks.
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This might be an unpopular opinion to some but I agree that VAR and Refs decisions have been woeful on a number of occasions but I would not subscribe to a conspiracy theory of everyone ganging up on us. Take VAR for example, while its true that we are probably most affected by VAR, other strong teams like Arsenal or Spurs also had sizeable decisions that affected them. Its not a zero sum game where because we are most affected so its a conspiracy against us.
So I can understand and stand together on the ridiculous execution of VAR and the referees clueless about the multiple rules and counter productive laws like the new offside law but to claim conspiracy, to me its more about us being frustrated about the current situation more than facts. And I would stand by my opinion.
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I don’t think the big VAR decisions are the best indicator of bias. They are just the most high profile.
I’m more concerned about the effect of the continual shit decisions that don’t get challenged or commented on. What you are allowed to do to Salah and Mane without punishment, compared to free kicks against us.
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There is definitely bias, but I think that it doesn’t express itself in the big decisions. It’s the small things, as Mascot said.
Look at our game yesterday. Within the first ten minutes, a guy tries to intimidate Salah by making a rash and potentially dangerous tackle on him. The ref runs towards him, and shows him the yellow, while making it unmistakably clear that no further action like that will be tolerated. A bit later, another Leipzig player tries to break up one of our moves in midfield by wringing his hands around one of our players: immediate yellow. All in all, Leipzig deservedly got four or five yellows for this kind of things. It changed the game in our favour as we then had more space to play football.
We both know that in a PL match with a PL ref, the first yellow wouldn’t have come out before the second half. Players would have been allowed to wrestle our lads off the ball all the time, and at the same time, our players would have been subject to intense scrutiny from the ref.
In England, the refs generally are a bit like the Greek divinities these days. You just never know what they will decide next, but they heavily influence games with their erratic ways of taking decisions. However, the stats over the years seem to prove that the red mancs get milder treatment than others, while the club LFC is subject to negative bias.
I for one don’t think either that there is a general conspiracy against us. But a general bias? Yeah, for diverse reasons, already outlined before.
Finally, as others have said, you can’t rule out Abu Dhabi doing what they do everywhere in their various businesses: bribing people. Refs are easy targets imo.
To come back to fsg: what can they do about that? I really don’t know. The best thing in the long term is probably to promote an impeccable image of the club and the city throughout the country. Having such an exemplary sportsman like Klopp at the helm is probably the best thing which can happen in that regard. Long-term, he really might help to diminish negative bias against the club all over the country.
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Yep, it’s these subjective calls that more often go against us and are not subject to VAR where we get stuffed. VAR is supposed to be objective but even then we’ve seen terrible calls where objectivity is being stretched to the absolute limit. On occasions, VAR is simply not being used properly at all (see the fact that Pickford wasn’t sent off).
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Not entirely irrelevant, I miss her after-game tweets. Anyone know if she’s OK!!!
Nobody said other clubs don’t suffer from it, the point being that only one club doesn’t - Manchester City.
We just happened to be the major immovable obstacle in their attempt to win back the title, so it took a consistent campaign of biased refereeing to nobble us and allow City through.
My hypothesis is straight forward - Manchester City are owned by a despicable regime who operate a police state, are frequent human rights abusers, have billions to waste, own businesses who spend millions on advertising, and have their own secret police.
They are the type of people to use foul means to get their way.
Media owners are easily manipulated by the millions Etihad Airlines spends in their media, thus editorial coverage is favourable or neutral.
Their secret police have the ways and means to conduct covert operations like approaching, manipulating, coercing and bribing authorities and referees. They also know all about the Swiss banking system.
Maybe Martin Atkinson has a nice fat Swiss bank account waiting for him, or a £1m a game referee contract in the Middle East when he ‘retires’. Or maybe the Abu Dhabi secret police hacked his web cam and have pictures of him dancing around in knickers and suspenders to ‘I wanna be Adored’. Who knows.
But for me it became clear during the Chelsea match in our title challenge of 2014, when Aktinson would not book a Chelsea player no matter how much time they wasted, that he was trying to influence a key result that would help City win the title. Contrast that with how quickly TAA was booked for taking ages over a throw in at the Etihad once.
City’s owners are the type, they have the means, and they have the motivation.
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