Colly

Don't know if anyone listens to the Guardian's Football Weekly podcast, but they brilliantly cover the "collapse of refereeing standards" and Arsenal's statement this week, which was skewered by the entire panel including the Arsenal supporter. Quite rightly they point out the current hysteria (horrendously covered on MOTD2 this week) is hurting refereeing rather than helping, where the fuck are we even going to get referees from if debatable decisions are treated as huge mistakes they should be sacked for? Raya is still whinging the ball was out of play, why doesn't he just deal with the cross?

I will post this every time you do this.

Anyone know why TNT never put the early kickoff on Ultimate? I want to watch us in silly def.

Am I missing something re Taylor? Much as our penalty v Wolves was very soft the general concensus was that it was the VAR at fault not him?

Gutted. I wanted another Dierbomb.

I usually shy well away from the "if this is x why isn't this", it's genuinely just how bad that foul was. I'm sick of seeing pundits (and refs) dismiss it all weekend because it was "his trailing leg", ignoring the fact that his trailing leg wasn't slowly dragging across the turf, it was flying through the air and hitting Longstaff mid shin knee first. It's my own fault for watching it too many times, but having broken that exact bit of shun the contact makes me shudder every time. Back on topic, I think you should be allowed an offside goal if you're down to 9, especially if it's a screamer like that. Was so slow as well considering he was relatively fairly far off. Liner nailed it easily.

I want more red cards for the bantz, can stay 1-1 for me.

Romero's tackle is poor, but it does go to show that referees are obsessed with the concept of "studs up" rather than the actual wording of the law given Havertz nearly split Longstaff's shin in twain with his knee.

It's just a journalist who tries to clarify the decisions, he's been doing it for a while. All the "big club" fans think PGMOL are paying him to help cover up the conspiracy.

In the press conference you could hear journos asking which bit he had issue with and he didn't respond, just kept ranting. Here's the ESPN VAR review for extra fume:

Good, that needs to keep happening, regardless of whether the commentator is Scouse. Edit: The calling out, not the chanting. For absolute clarity. 😕

Club statement: The club wholeheartedly protest the lack of a point for Newcastle's win on Saturday and back the managers suggestion that a Baddar conspiracy is to blame for this startling error. Nb: This is tongue in cheek but still the most valid club statement of the weekend.

Inexplicably Andy Townsend is Townsend Jr.

They'll be dancing on the streets of Cray Valley Paper Mills tonight!

Yeah it's a strange feeling being simultaneously gutted for Luton but at the same time made up for Diaz. The real loser is my draft team which had Watkins, Konate, Salah and Jota...

The one last bit of my big rant I forgot, is that other than the ref protectionism and the weird freak Liverpool thing the other week I reject the idea we're in some kind of "worst refereeing ever" zone. Shit decisions have always happened, it's just the additional scrutiny and the fact that VAR has a second look that highlights it more. Refereeing is vastly worse in the lower leagues, and as for VAR only being bad in England...

The Bruno one is absolutely baffling, you won't see a clearer not given red all season. I said earlier I thought he'd get retrospective punishment but no idea how that works if VAR has already seen it? Feel like there's been examples where it's happened but can't find any. The Havertz foul by the way gets worse every time I've seen it. You know how usually everyone says "they look worse in slow motion"? That one looks worse at normal speed, because everyone excusing it is saying "it's his trailing leg", ignoring the fact he's coming in at absurd speed and his knee goes straight through Longstaffs ankle. He's lucky he's escaped that without a massively serious injury. It's another of these classic ones where if it's slightly unusual (I.e. not an obvious studs up) no one knows how to manage it, but there's far more intent and potential to injure there than in most of the stud on shin ones recently. Lascelles absolutely correct to tell Havertz that he's gone to injure him. Re the offside @Adam I think it'd just the relative positions that make it difficult. Ball, Joelinton and Gordon are basically (ironically) in line and about 3 feet apart, so all blocking the parallel cameras. In theory they're able to sync the frames from different cameras so you'd think there might be a view facing from the penalty spot, but we don't usually have that weird wired camera and the net would have blocked from behind the goal. I do think people expect the impossible from technology, I saw someone on Twitter suggest there should be a camera view looking down on the line for things like the Willock part, forgetting this is real life not FIFA, and employing a small army of drones to patrol the goal lines of every game is slightly overkill.

The problem is that fans, driven by pundits, won't accept "subjective decisions can go either way". VAR wasn't a natural organic addition to the game, it was a result of football media becoming obsessed with refereeing decisions above all else and this is the result. I'm going to use the word veering for the second time in 24 hours, because again pundits constantly parrot the same lines for years, a demand for referees to referee using "common sense", alongside a demand for referees to be consistent, two things that are almost completely mutually exclusive. It's great for tv as it's forced PGMOL/IFAB to insert loads of ridiculously prescriptive lines into say the handball law so Lineker can read it on a Saturday night rather than talk about a match that's actually happened. What's the solution? I don't think there is one. Football isn't tennis. It's subjective, it's a contact sport where use of body/arms etc is basically immeasurable and yellow card offenses can vary across the same game let alone 3 weeks later. And as @gunnar hendershow says, adding a second set of eyes to such subjective calls doesn't add anything remotely productive other than reinforce someones claim on either side that the ref was right/wrong (delete as applicable). This isn't remotely a defense of the current English refereeing setup though with the silly defense of poor decisions, and the "apologies", but I honestly don't see how anyone thought letting Howard "let's the game flow" Webb would fix anything there. As @DavidMarrio says imaginary cards seem to be fair game again (though I do think they're easy for a ref to miss and for cameras to pick up), and kicking the ball away not punished as much as earlier in the season, but that's nothing new, every season there's something "they'll clamp down on" (usually holding in the box) which gets dropped 3 weeks in. Not sure I follow on this one, ball crossing line is in theory completely objective (even moreso than offside given there's no "interfering with play" to consider), so there shouldn't even need to be a precedent. The difference between those two is simply that they had an angle on the goal line for Rashford that they felt showed the ball out, that wasn't the case for Willock.

I'd imagine Bruno will get a retrospective ban, utterly stupid as he has a bad habit of being. God knows what that means ban wise given his yellow took him to 5 so he was already missing Bournemouth. 4 match ban, or would the retrospective red remove the yellow? Back to the goal though, what do we actually want VAR to do? We keep veering from "high bar, quick review, only for absolute clangers" to something like this where the out of play/offsides are marginal at best and impossible to see with the tech available, and a foul which both Neville and Carrager thing isn't one. For both this one and the soft pen we got at Wolves having no VAR would have meant the exact same result, a goal and a penalty, so where do we take it? Do we remove VAR, or do we push it further to rereferee the game, removing the "clear and obvious" logic and spending even more time looking at every incident ad infinitum to utterly fuck over crowds in stadiums? Arteta's gone ranty as hell in his interview over a lost point where his team managed one (shit) shot on goal, were incredibly lucky not to lose Havertz to a straight red let alone the second yellow he somehow avoided, and lost to a goal that pundits are still debating. It's pure Fergie style deflection, and suddenly we're talking about VAR rather than a poor Arsenal performance.

Obviously not seen this Bruno thing back yet but the ref had absolutely no control of that game whatsoever. Horrifically inconsistent at absolutely everything even if just where a throw in should be taken from, and he just raised it and raised it throughout. Pleased to get a win against a team clearly turning up to timewaste and shithouse First time I've ever sat through a "Checking ball in play, checking foul, checking offside", would rather not do it again. I think the foul is debatable, but there's no way you can say that ball's out, and Joelinton is about 5 yards onside.

Hilariously bad, which is good for everyone else.

Rashford is out of Man Utd's squad today, BUT FOR WHAT KAMMY?!?

Fulham 2 vs. 1 Man Utd (Sat 12.30pm, TNT) Burnley 1 vs. 2 Crystal Palace (Sat 3pm) Sheff Utd 0 vs. 2 Wolves (Sat 3pm) Newcastle 3 vs. 1 Arsenal (Sat 5.30pm, Sky) Nottm Forest 0 vs 2 Aston Villa (Sun 2pm, Sky)