The Latest VAR Farce

Man Utd V Chelsea

Not a fan of either team but as a football fan VAR is killing the game.  Penalty given for inadvertently standing on somebody's foot long after the ball is played so in no way did the foot clash change the play.

Something needs to change.

No going back now, too late I’m afraid. Whole thing’s fųcked, best to just accept it.

But VAR only highlighted something the ref missed, then VAR pointed it out for him to have another look, so VAR did it’s job but did the ref get it correct first or second time?

Quoted from Gaffer58

But VAR only highlighted something the ref missed, then VAR pointed it out for him to have another look, so VAR did it’s job but did the ref get it correct first or second time?

Good point.
Would love to have seen the on field referee say no penalty.

Has a referee EVER stuck with his origional decision after looking at the screen?

Quoted from 141269

Man Utd V Chelsea

Not a fan of either team but as a football fan VAR is killing the game.  Penalty given for inadvertently standing on somebody's foot long after the ball is played so in no way did the foot clash change the play.

Something needs to change.

It was a penalty. Lucky he didn’t break his metatarsal.

I’m no fan of VAR, but there it was justified.

I can see why it was given, only because you become normalised to these things being given.

I just don't see it as a penalty. The Chelsea player is planting his foot in a natural way just as Antony puts his foot down underneath.
It's not deliberate, reckless or endangering the opponent.  Must every accidental contact now be a foul?

There’s just been a VAR delay to check a McTominay goal. It really does suck all the joy and spontaneity out of watching football

Quoted from 141269

I can see why it was given, only because you become normalised to these things being given.

I just don't see it as a penalty. The Chelsea player is planting his foot in a natural way just as Antony puts his foot down underneath.
It's not deliberate, reckless or endangering the opponent.  Must every accidental contact now be a foul?

I hate the term ‘deliberate’ being used. Who deliberately hurts an opponent, other than a scumbag? Who deliberately fouls someone or handballs in the box? Nobody. Nobody in their right mind would do that. A foul is a foul, whether you mean it or not.

Roy Keane
Luis Suarez

It's not so much about deliberately hurting an opponent, it's about deliberately fouling them.  

There's also the question of intent.  We've seen players lose their head when they feel aggrieved and subsequently dive into a challenge with little regard to the consequences.  They need punishing.

Accidentally treading on a foot that a millisecond earlier is placed directly underneath where you are about to put your foot down is not a foul surely.

Quoted from 141269

Roy Keane
Luis Suarez

It's not so much about deliberately hurting an opponent, it's about deliberately fouling them.  

There's also the question of intent.  We've seen players lose their head when they feel aggrieved and subsequently dive into a challenge with little regard to the consequences.  They need punishing.

Accidentally treading on a foot that a millisecond earlier is placed directly underneath where you are about to put your foot down is not a foul surely.

I respect your argument, but if you’re late, the term is “reckless”.  If you’re late, you should be punished, whether you’ve been lazy or you’re slower than your opponent.

Quoted from blundellpork

There’s just been a VAR delay to check a McTominay goal. It really does suck all the joy and spontaneity out of watching football

That’s why I struggle to watch the Prem. And wasn’t the criterion supposed to be “clear and obvious error”?

In other news Man City get an absolute skull fúcking from Aston Villa. The most one-sided 1-0 I’ve seen in a long time.

I don’t like VAR, but that’s a penalty. It’s only because  Anthony has relinquished control of the ball that some don’t think it’s a foul, but that’s irrelevant. Of all the arguments to be made against VAR recently, that’s not the one.

Too many people forget all the many good VAR decisions and highlight just the bad ones. It's a work in progress but is an improvement on the old system of relying on humans. It will be the same when we get driverless cars, everyone will complain about the handful of deaths caused by the cars and forget that humans used to kill one million of one another every year. Classic case of confirmation bias.

Quoted from jimgtfc

I don’t like VAR, but that’s a penalty. It’s only because  Anthony has relinquished control of the ball that some don’t think it’s a foul, but that’s irrelevant. Of all the arguments to be made against VAR recently, that’s not the one.

It’s not a penalty, there is an argument. The opinion of the VAR has given that . If it was you , you would give it . If it was me I wouldn’t .
The ref going to the monitor is an absolute joke , the VAR rules football (that has it) now and it’s garbage . Not one single monitor visit had been overruled. What’s the point

But we're still relying on humans.

The only difference now is that humans have tech to help them analyse moments, but we can still mess it up by not using the tech properly, or just not thinking clearly under pressure.

I think the biggest shift in the whole VAR debate is to re-educate everyone — players, managers, pundits, media, fans — that it's there to simply eradicate the absolute howlers.

That's it.

Contentious decisions will remain. Referees may one week call every soft challenge a penalty, then the next week be more lenient and wave them away.

I think people get wound up because they expect correct decisions to be made 100% of the time. It's fine to aim for that, but it's never going to be the case.

Football ebbs and flows. There's a lot of interpretation involved in every 'coming together'.

Personally, if the ref didn't give the penalty at the time and VAR are 100% certain it is a penalty then fair play, make that call. If they're not 100% certain then leave the decision with the on-field ref.

If you stand on somebody's foot, it's a foul. Intent doesn't come into it since the laws were rewritten back in the late 90s, so it's a penalty.

Not controversial at all, in my opinion.

Perhaps a Windscale => Sellafield type renaming would help?

Maybe SARS (Stupidly Absurd Review System)?

Fortunately this football virus only infects the "Premiership".

VAR sucks.

Quoted from 137

Perhaps a Windscale => Sellafield type renaming would help?

With the data and nuclear leaks coming from Sellafield at the moment, they might have to re-name it again soon.

Quoted from RichMariner

But we're still relying on humans.

The only difference now is that humans have tech to help them analyse moments, but we can still mess it up by not using the tech properly, or just not thinking clearly under pressure.

I think the biggest shift in the whole VAR debate is to re-educate everyone — players, managers, pundits, media, fans — that it's there to simply eradicate the absolute howlers.

That's it.

Contentious decisions will remain. Referees may one week call every soft challenge a penalty, then the next week be more lenient and wave them away.

I think people get wound up because they expect correct decisions to be made 100% of the time. It's fine to aim for that, but it's never going to be the case.

Football ebbs and flows. There's a lot of interpretation involved in every 'coming together'.

Personally, if the ref didn't give the penalty at the time and VAR are 100% certain it is a penalty then fair play, make that call. If they're not 100% certain then leave the decision with the on-field ref.

The problem is the rules of football leave so much to interpretation. The only way to achieve better consistency in the 1% of decisions that VAR are involved with is to hand the whole thing over to AI. A model trained on what is a decision and what is not a decision should be much more consistent than different sets of officials and it would be able to make that decision instantly rather than spend ages pondering over every camera angle as it could "see" every angle in a few milliseconds. Offsides leading to goals would be much easier to try first than penalties as it is so much simpler.

The vast majority of the decisions on the pitch are still made by the referee and assistants though. Maybe one day, like tennis has, every decision can be made by technology, but there's a way to go first!

Quoted from BraStrap

Too many people forget all the many good VAR decisions and highlight just the bad ones. It's a work in progress but is an improvement on the old system of relying on humans. It will be the same when we get driverless cars, everyone will complain about the handful of deaths caused by the cars and forget that humans used to kill one million of one another every year. Classic case of confirmation bias.

It absolutely isn’t an upgrade on the old system.  If you look at one metric (correct decisions) it’s an improvement but that doesn’t take into account the knock on effects (impact on celebrations, separation of top level to lower levels, delay to play, lack of visibility in the stadium).  
I want to enjoy football, not stand around a stadium no idea what’s going on waiting to see if someone’s hand is offside.

It’s excrement, implemented because there’s ok much money in football to risk bad decisions and of no benefit to the fan.

Quoted from GrimRob

The problem is the rules of football leave so much to interpretation. The only way to achieve better consistency in the 1% of decisions that VAR are involved with is to hand the whole thing over to AI. A model trained on what is a decision and what is not a decision should be much more consistent than different sets of officials and it would be able to make that decision instantly rather than spend ages pondering over every camera angle as it could "see" every angle in a few milliseconds. Offsides leading to goals would be much easier to try first than penalties as it is so much simpler.

The vast majority of the decisions on the pitch are still made by the referee and assistants though. Maybe one day, like tennis has, every decision can be made by technology, but there's a way to go first!

A tennis match is completely different. 2 players, few rules apart from whether the ball is in or out.

Football will never be run by robots, as it is has rules, but so many of them are open to human interpretation which is as it should be. An elbow in the face can be a red card or an accident. If they stuck to goal line technology and accept that refs just like players make mistakes all would be well. Last week Haaland misses an absolutely open goal and shrugs his shoulders; the ref makes a similarly bad mistake and he turns into a raging monster.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

A tennis match is completely different. 2 players, few rules apart from whether the ball is in or out.

Football will never be run by robots, as it is has rules, but so many of them are open to human interpretation which is as it should be. An elbow in the face can be a red card or an accident. If they stuck to goal line technology and accept that refs just like players make mistakes all would be well. Last week Haaland misses an absolutely open goal and shrugs his shoulders; the ref makes a similarly bad mistake and he turns into a raging monster.

Most of the decisions in football are pretty trivial and could easily be made by AI. Throw-ins, Corners even Offsides. We have millions of examples which could be used to train models and I bet there would be far less obviously wrong decisions than now. I suspect the harder decisions are pretty trivial compared to something like driving a car which AI models can already do.

Quoted from 141269

Man Utd V Chelsea

Not a fan of either team but as a football fan VAR is killing the game.  Penalty given for inadvertently standing on somebody's foot long after the ball is played so in no way did the foot clash change the play.

Something needs to change.

Wasn't the worst decision VAR made in the game. Strictly speaking it was a penalty, but only ten minutes or so later, Sterling's foot was stamped on late too. Decision by VAR, no further action for a very similar offence. Although I'm lost for words on many VAR decisions that overrule the referee's original decision, I've been more flabbergasted with many VAR turn a blind eye to. There was an analysis of these a couple of seasons back, and if applied correctly it showed some teams were affected by as much as eight places in the league table. VAR is making as many mistakes by omission as referees that affect results of games. So my question is, what is the point  of all of these delays in emotion? Arguing about refereeing decisions used to be part of the game. That still remains, only with additional arguments about VAR on top. Have there been more correct decisions overall? Probably, yes. Has VAR improved the sport of football? No.

Quoted from GrimRob

Most of the decisions in football are pretty trivial and could easily be made by AI. Throw-ins, Corners even Offsides. We have millions of examples which could be used to train models and I bet there would be far less obviously wrong decisions than now. I suspect the harder decisions are pretty trivial compared to something like driving a car which AI models can already do.

You surely don't want the game to be reffed by AI?

Quoted from Brummie Codfather

It absolutely isn’t an upgrade on the old system.  If you look at one metric (correct decisions) it’s an improvement but that doesn’t take into account the knock on effects (impact on celebrations, separation of top level to lower levels, delay to play, lack of visibility in the stadium).  
I want to enjoy football, not stand around a stadium no idea what’s going on waiting to see if someone’s hand is offside.

It’s excrement, implemented because there’s ok much money in football to risk bad decisions and of no benefit to the fan.

I totally agree. The data says better decisions are being made but that simple piece of data is completely out of context for the wider implications of the game, even if it is true and does it take into account what it misses bearing in mind every decision has a knock on effect?

Human beings are what matters; without the imperfections of humans the game would be flawed from the other direction and would turn a lot of people off.

Like a lot of things today VAR is an out of control juggernaut that seems to bypass the people that matter - the fans.

I’m going to get a lot of ❌ for this but the VAR decisions at Southampton last season took the shine off the result for me . A bit of a hollow victory considering the questionable decisions that went in our favour.
It’s killing the game , but as with everything PL it’s all about things apparently being fair and the £££ that’s at stake .

I guess Sky could provide the funds for the AI ref...They'd want to name it something footbally too though...SKYNET

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

You surely don't want the game to be reffed by AI?

Wouldn't mind seeing a trial in a lower league somewhere for a season. If it gets more decisions right than human officials wouldn't it be better? Everyone says ideally you don't notice the referee.

Plenty of people thinking about it, e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/.....erie-a-b2404962.html

Probably inevitable at some stage. When you look at how much has changed

Quoted from louth_in_the_south

I’m going to get a lot of ❌ for this but the VAR decisions at Southampton last season took the shine off the result for me . A bit of a hollow victory considering the questionable decisions that went in our favour.
It’s killing the game , but as with everything PL it’s all about things apparently being fair and the £££ that’s at stake .

Questionable? The first was a clear handball by the modern rules of the game, his arm was out. The second wasn't VAR anyway the ref gave it for a punch in the back (yeah our striker went down easily but otherwise you don't get the decision for what was a clear and obvious foul). I was more drunk off with smith later in the season for staying on his feet after a keeper did the same to him after a corner, it was a clear foul, but you don't get it unless you go down.

The other VAR decision wasn't contentious at all, their 'second' was offside narrowly but definitely.

Personally I flipping loved it and the fact some premiership millionaire club lost due to VAR which they themselves wanted made it all the sweeter!