Premier League 2023/24

[Colly]

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.

1 hour ago, Kaney said:

Ball goes out of play, Gabi is pushed down and Joelinton is offside but fuck it, let it stand.

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.

[Kaney]

Gordon is offside though. If Gabi is the only defender behind the ball, then Gordon's leg is clearly offside since its ahead of the ball.

Edit: As far as I understand it.

[Colly]

 

 

[DavidMarrio]

The ball being out, I can understand not being given its stupidly fine margins and only way you'd know is if you had like goalline tech 

The offside for me again is a really fine margin

But for me that's a foul. Both hands on his back pushes him. 

Also Wolves conceded a pen today that wasn't a pen against Newcastle last week. 

Honestly, officiating in this league both on pitch and VAR is so consistently shite and poor it does make me think how bad is it in the lower leagues

 

[Twist]

Just seen the Bruno challenge and he should not have been left on the pitch. It wasn't just reckless, it's brazenly obvious he intends to elbow him in the head.

Havertz was also lucky to stay on the pitch. Completely out of control, studs up, contact could have ended up being a lot uglier.

[Colly]

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. 

[DavidMarrio]

Saudi VARabia more like

Arsenal were crap but I really don't blame them for feeling like they've been hard done by with that decision. I dont think it went out and I actually think its brilliant by Willock, the offside is really difficult and they've said there wasn't a definitive angle they could use to draw the lines but I think that's a foul given its two hands into the back and its directly led to a goal. Its not like a major tackle or anything but I think you would see that given in a lot of games. 

I think just having consistency is a big thing. Rashford against Brighton is a good example in terms of did the ball go out or not. Said it before but booking players signalling for yellow cards went out the window after 2 games. It just feels like VAR was meant to help create less controversy and most of the time its creating more. I'm in the camp of just scrap it. 

I still reiterate the standard of officiating both on field and off field is dreadful. The game as a whole showed that with the lack of control and stuff that there was no intervention over. It feels like the refs dig there heels in and will back each other up even if someone's made a mistake. I'm sure Howard Webb in his little segment with Owen will make out they've been brilliant as always.

 

 

[gunnar hendershow]

They'd do best to have a set time you can look at video replay. There's only so many angles, if you can't find anything after looking at each angle twice in slow motion then that should be it. Calls were made all the time before VAR that 3/4 of the time would've gone the other way (or the "right" way), it's the nature of judgment calls. I don't see a purpose in VAR spending time looking for the thinnest of margins. It can serve a great purpose for things like handballs, fouls, offsides but in the instance where pundits can debate the call either way it's just adding fluff to an inherently imperfect process.

[Colly]

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.

11 hours ago, DavidMarrio said:

I think just having consistency is a big thing. Rashford against Brighton is a good example in terms of did the ball go out or not.

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.

[Kaney]

The decisions leading to the goal could have went either way for sure, fair enough. I do not understand how VAR could have looked at Brunos elbow/forearm and his following actions and thought "yep, that's fine". Subjective issues are one thing but when you've got multiple repeating situations of VAR/referees blatantly ignoring shit then what's the point.

[Adam]

I couldn't have said it better @Colly, the entire usage of VAR just isn't working. Football isn't built for technology in the same way, due to the subjectivity involved.

In this particular instance, the decision-making is all over the shop in this Newcastle game. Havertz is borderline but I'd not dispute that being a red too much. Bruno's is 100% a red, he has intentionally struck the player off the ball. It's a foul by Joelinton for the goal, and Gordon is most likely offside but somehow they don't have a good camera angle of that? This really sticks for me because it's a Premier League game, in one of the better stadiums, and it's an instance within the penalty area. How can you not have a good angle of it? Baffling.

Wolves must feel really hard done by as well. Both the Sheffield United penalty and the Newcastle one are clearly dives once you get a second look - that is what VAR is surely for? The referee sees a foul in the moment, but both players are essentially diving and making sure some form of contact happens. VAR should overrule that.

[Colly]

36 minutes ago, Kaney said:

The decisions leading to the goal could have went either way for sure, fair enough. I do not understand how VAR could have looked at Brunos elbow/forearm and his following actions and thought "yep, that's fine". Subjective issues are one thing but when you've got multiple repeating situations of VAR/referees blatantly ignoring shit then what's the point.

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.

[FLiam]

I'm late to the party here - but how the fuck did Bruno G not get a straight red card for that forearm smash to Jorginho's head?

I have seen reports that the VAR said it "wasn't nice, but wasn't an elbow so only a yellow card". So is blatantly forearm smashing someone in the head now acceptable in Premier League games?

The rule on violent conduct is:

Quote

Violent conduct is when a player uses or attempts to use excessive force or brutality against an opponent when not challenging for the ball, or against a team-mate, team official, match official, spectator or any other person, regardless of whether contact is made.

In addition, a player who, when not challenging for the ball, deliberately strikes an opponent or any other person on the head or face with the hand or arm, is guilty of violent conduct unless the force used was negligible.

When the VAR's are ignoring basic rules of the game, there's absolutely no point in having them.

Not even going to get into the goal decision - the referees in England must be the lowest quality around, it's staggering how incompetent they continue to be.

[Colly]

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...

 

[DavidMarrio]

If only Aspas hit the corner against Chelsea in 13/14 with the same amount of force as the VAR screen 

[FLiam]

On the subject of the goal, I still don’t see how this doesn’t prove the ball is out of play. It’s clearly out of play.

[Colly]

 

 

[Szumi]

I just think it's hilarious to hear Mikel Arteta's response yesterday about the referees because after the Liverpool/Spurs game, his response was (paraphrase), "accidents happen, we have to protect the referees"

[Hobo]

well, still waiting for the first Liverpool goal against Luton since 2008.

[Szumi]

That was peak Darwin Nunez right there. Skying it from 2 yards away. I'm now half expecting him to score a worldie.