The Referees or The Twelfth Man

At no time do you ever hear Oliver in any of the conversations so im not sure what the 4th official does or is involved in VAR decisions. If hes not involved he possibly isn’t aware of the wrong call.

Thought Michael Oliver was fourth official… He was obviously listening in to the conversation because he responds with a… ‘Yeah’

Apparently the Oli mentioned is someone to do with VAR operations.

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Yep that appears to be correct… In the transcript though, it mentions Fourth Official - Whom responds

Just dawned on me with the whole VAR thing is that the referee, the person on the pitch is completely blind to these reviews.

Again that’s a variation to other sports where the video ref does checks or provides footage for the referee to make their decision i.e. there is only one decision maker in the game.

Argh I’m pissed off again.

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No mention of the 4th official in transcript till after decision is made not during decision.

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Ahhh Okay… See Post Spurs Thread, Post 929 - Transcript lifted direct from a newspaper report - Fourth Official mentioned in that :man_shrugging:

Sorry i meant during decision hes not heard its only after kick off.

In Cricket the video umpire makes the decisions and the video ref makes them in rugby league as well. no such sending the referee in the middle over to a screen like var does

Yeah, it’s VAR Hub Ops executive Oli Kohout, not Michael Oliver.

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He needs to be fined … we were against 14

So what’s he next move (from our side)? Will there be a next move?

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Maybe its made?
Shown the rest of football the level of ineptitude/bias/corruption that exists?

If we hadn’t gone down the route of "exploring " next steps, the UAE trip, the audio would still be non news.

I hope Liverpool progress this to a direct challenge to the PL, to get the authorities to clean up the levels of bias in the game.

Unrelated, the charges against City need to be deakt with now. The fallout of that procedure may shine more light on referees, their UAE trips etc.

In the short term…the appeal against Curtis red card would be upheld on most occasions.
He wouldn’t get a red card for an innocuous challenge of he played for City.
The VAR would not determine the situation with a still picture.

They couldn’t possibly admit to two major errors in one game, let alone the other 3 or 4 that helped City to stay top.

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I was hoping that they would also have the VAR from the sending off and the missed Gomez penalty call. I suspect that would indicate both that they were not paying attention and clueless as to the VAR procedures. No doubt the coverage was too damning.

As it is, what they released seems to indicate that they treat the job as a bit of a jolly for the old boys club. The use ambiguous language and the fact that many people could not determine who was speaking (or who “Oli” was, for example).

Is there a published guide to VAR procedure? What are the protocols to avoid illicit communication. How are toilet breaks handled. Are they compos mentis, e.g. are there checks for alcohol and drugs? What checks are made to determine if there is outside influence (I still think the biggest risk to the officials is spot-betting gangs).

Surely the biggest thing is the overseas work. That seems to have gone completely unreported until the weekend which makes me wonder if some journalists have already been on the case?

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I’d be asking more questions. Such as.

A. What was England doing at the time of the incident? Clearly not paying attention to the game.
B. Do you believe this failure affected the outcome of game?
C. Do you believe this “mistake” influenced the entire officiating of the game after this point?
B. What are you going to do about this? What are the next steps?
C. What happened in the UAE?
D. Is there a conflict of interest with officials being paid by an entity that owns a PL club?

Many of the answers are kind of obvious but the PGMOL need to be heard admitting to it and becoming accountable.

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Well clearly there is a conflict of interest but that’s not to say that anything untoward happened. The point of avoiding conflict of interests is that the questions are never asked.

I’m wondering if they have been anywhere else. There is some indication that this is related to the HMRC case in which they avoided falling under “disguised employment” because they were free to work independently of PGMOL.

In relation to those last two points I’d ask whether they are actually paid properly? If money is the problem then that is something the PL can (and should) address.

Incidentally, your points are labelled ABCBCD. I’m now wondering if this is an unusal guitar tuning.

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Why I think Oli was Oliver is they say “he called it in” which doesn’t make much sense if it’s a guy in the office.

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Ah bollox. I kept on adding more questions, got distracted by someone and then pushed reply without remembering to edit the abc’s

Sloppy, bit like England.

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Just some transparency for me. I agree, clearly there is a conflict of interest and the PGMOL should be fully aware of it. If not, why?

It could open a proper can of worms and being honest given the mood I’m in, I’m all for it. It needs to be ripped right open and exposed. As you say it might be completely innocent but I’m honestly finding it hard to believe.

It really bugs me that following the VAR goal howler, all of them as a unit went full ham on us afterwards. I really want to know the thinking going on there. I’m honestly very uncomfortable with where that goes but it needs opening up. Officials should not influence games but even if you ignore the VAR call this is potentially what has happened.

Language chosen carefully not to apportion guilt without more evidence.

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