This entirely. And I have seen cases of Manchester United and Everton being hard done by and they have my sympathy.
However, I can even recall after the Spurs debacle that it was all tribalism. That suited the Premier League and FA entirely, because after Paul Joyce put out the story of Oliver’s UAE side hustle, it threatened to blow up into a full corruption scandal.
I seem to remember we raised the issue of the UAE side hustles and PGMOL stopped it shortly after that.
Since then Oliver has seem have a particular vendetta against us.
Inconsistency is unavoidable. For lots of decisions there is no definitive right or wrong and reasonable people will be on different sides of the debate. One of the big problems VAR has introduced an unreasonable expectation of correctness that it was never going to be able to deliver, and the way the authorities have responded to this have reinforced that expectation.
You have shit like the Key Match Incident Panel that votes on whether big decisions were right and wrong and when they decide something was wrong that gets presented as accepted wisdom. Yet you look at the actual decision it will be a 3-2 decision among the 5 member panel, so you still have 2 experts disagreeing it was wrong, but they have put out into the world the expectation that this decision SHOULD have gone the other way and thus you should expect every ref to make the same decision on every subsequent similar incident otherwise they can be called “wrong”
Webb was brought in because he was perceived to be a good communicator and every time he opens his mouth he makes it worse
People are still talking about inconsistency being the most infuriating thing. They are missing the point, massively.
The referees are making decisions based on who they want to win/fuck over. They don’t care if they made the exact opposite call last week.
Mascot makes the point that PGMOL are independent to the Pl. If that’s the case then there is no reason why LFC can’t go all-in and call them out for the cheating, corrupt organisation they are. Unless the powers-that-be at the club think we are refereed fairly and to the same standards as everyone else? If they do then we may as well just not fucking bother.
You cant have inconsistency in the application of the law, that’s entirely what we argue about in court. The very essence of the doctrine of precedent is like cases are treated alike, so the only get out they have, is to distinguish each case on its own facts.
I don’t see anything different between the two headers that have been allowed/disallowed as goals.
The problem is there is not an efficient remedy for clubs, other than drop out the league. They are stuck with this regime. Its utter madness that refereeing keeps getting away with this, and I am inclined to think, like @jaffod, that football is increasingly being rigged. Not rigged 100% but where we can we will bend it.
This as well for a club (Citeh) who have stalled on a billion financial breaches for what 5yrs?!
The landscape far view looks as dodgy as fck.
Completely agree with this.
However, could some of the varying (in)consistency be leveled out by having one video ref for the week’s round of matches. This way there is one interpretation of the laws across a round of matches… Right now each match ref can hide in the situational greyness of I was there and I saw it like this or that based on the match dynamics. A removed video ref just sees (asked to see) the event and then interprets and then implements a decision in the context of the laws.
How do you have a VAR overseeing more than 1 game at a time?
Can you have something sort like the NFL - where (as far as I can tell from watching Redzone) TDs, certain catches and other tight calls are officiated centrally?
It is really only key decisions that need clarifying and one official could suffice. You could as a default have all penalties and red cards reviewed and moreover, the ref can also refer certain calls they are unsure of. In addition, as there is rarely a full list of fixtures on one day at one time, one ref could be enough.. Even if there is a full fixture list then the likelihood that there is a spate of serious incidences across all the matches at the same time would be rare and at a push, have two - one official covering up to 4 matches for example.
If you are requiring VAR to determine for themselves when to get involved then it is a no go.
If you are asking other people to decide when to get VAR involved (e.g. the manager), which I have become increasingly sure is the better approach, then you end up not even needing a VAR you just need a technician in the booth who can load up the video for the ref to review.
I guess you could have a set of incidences that require VAR by default (e.g. all goals and red cards?) and then a managers challenge - say one per game of half.
Just wait until driverless cars 
Technology. Completely oversold crap.
Why would a manager asking for a review get a different decision than the shit the VAR throws up for us now?
Still the same idiots making the reviews!
I didnt say it would.
But it removes the significant point of controversy of when and over what VAR can involved and eliminates the absurd “wrong decision but right use of VAR” scenarios that come up every week
I have been advocating this for years. It is a no brainer… transparent timings. Everyone can see exactly how long is left. It works so well for every other sport.
Its done in tennis isnt it, the player gets 2 challenges per set on any call?
They could bring in some gameshow music, refreshments …
VAR didn’t bother with the hand on Macallisters throat…wether they were asked to or not…if they saw the incident…as we all did…they could alert the ref in his shell like…and indicate violent behaviour…but nahhhh…that’s too much trouble.
They just say stuff.
Stuff and nonsense.
‘Not unreasonable’. That’s where we’re at.
I stopped worrying about match officials a long time ago. 80% of them are bastards, and Howard Webb is the worst.