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The good old Schaaf tactics.

Goal line technology is fine, works perfectly. VAR still fuck up red card decisions.

I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone really. This latest spate of racism on social media just reminds me of how disgusting so many of us actually are when you boil it down to key characteristics and is the latest thing to make me pretty depressed about the world around me. It feels right now that no matter how many well-intentioned people there are around that want to treat people the right way and share the truth with each other, they'll always be handily outnumbered by groups with a mob mentality that want to act out for reasons I can't understand. Like, at least when you repeatedly get away with stealing small items from a shop, you have new stuff, but with Cagliari repeatedly getting away with this racial abuse, what are they even gaining? What did they gain out of those chants to Lukaku? He scored anyway, they lost anyway, and they gave their club more bad publicity.

Personally I think anything that is available should be used, It's either in ( in which case use it ) or it's not! sounds to me like they are cherry picking what they do and don't want to use and what rules apply and when.. It's one or the other. @RandoEFC covered this a while back and I agreed with him that when it comes to the handball situation for example much as though some can seem daft, that the simple rule is if it touches or comes off your arm/hand regardless of where your arm/hand is or if it was accidental or not then a goal should be ruled out or a penalty given. At least this way it's crystal clear for all... annoying as fuck obviously if it was totally accidental but at least the rule is clear and it applies to all without fail so that makes the judgement fair even if we don't agree with it. VAR should be advising the ref on anything he may have missed or where his call was on instinct perhaps incorrect and for that he should be using the pitch side monitor to put right any error in judgement, We keep giving refs a hard time but then they have the ability to improve their decision making and then it promptly gets taken out of their hands it would seem... We are going to have to allow this first season proper to gauge if it has been more a success or a failure as far as the fans and decisions are concerned.. Either way we will not be happy, we moan if someone gets away with a blatant handball for example and because they are not reviewing other fouls/incidents, and yet we don't want to have to wait for VAR to make a decision because we feel it slows the game down even though we demand justice..

Shite like Twitter doesn’t help. Absolutely no proof there that anyone has actually said it or a link providing facts but it’s got at least 3,500 likes, however many RT’s and nearly 1,500 engaging with it despite there being no proof and people are daft and believe anything they see on social media. I’m not in any way defending the Cagliari fans here btw.

Love this picture that sums up the abuse Lukaku received last night

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49545743 Lol "shared responsibility" - nah fuck off Gove, you Brexiteers and all the fuckers who voted leave are going to be the ones who share the responsibility for what happens to the UK after this. Everyone else is just responsible for themselves until this blows over.

VAR will never replace match officials. Never ever ever. It looks so far as if there is some hypersensitivity that officials have when it comes to overruling the match referee in the Premier League. The "clear and obvious" thing is a problem. I certainly seem to have a different interpretation of what's clear and obvious than the officials because we've seen lots of decisions not overturned which looked pretty clear and obviously wrong to me. This is an overriding issue with referees that completely outdates VAR. "The referee's word is final". Why? Referees are not robots, they are human beings, and there's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake. The 22 players around them make mistakes while millions watch on all the time and have to embrace it and move on. I understand that abuse of officials is a big issue in this country from grass roots to Premier League, but it doesn't help to put referees in this glass cage because it makes them come off as above reproach and maybe even arrogant through no fault of their own. In rugby the referees wear microphones so that the crowd can hear them explain decisions. In tennis you have umpires and line judges who get overruled by Hawkeye all the time, they dont burst into flames and they certainly haven't found themselves out of a job because of technology, and that's in a sport where you could quite easily get rid of all line judges and set Hawkeye up to just set a small alarm off every time a ball lands outside the court like the referee's watch for goal line technology. Football is a sport of a million grey areas so I can't see in any way how VAR should be a threat to referees. The implementation in the Premier League has indeed been controversial at best so far. However, the technology is not the problem, it simply can't be. The next step seems to be to change the clear and obvious thing. Their other problem is trying to use VAR to make black and white decisions, like with the handball rule that caught City out against Spurs. Football will never be black and white and trying to make it so is a waste of VAR. Judgement calls will always be necessary, and VAR should only be used to get a closer look from different angles if necessary. They also need to be braver about overruling the match officials in the stadium. Unless there's a massive ego culture amongst top referees that I'm not aware of, I can't imagine a referee being too upset about someone with a load of extra camera angles making a "better" decision than them. I don't imagine someone pig-headed enough to get annoyed or insecure that someone with more resources than them is overruling their split second decision has the self-awareness of professionalism to end up anywhere near refereeing a top flight match in the first place. Those are my key takeaways from what is still only four weekends into this huge change to the sport.

Funnily enough I think you're onto something there. VAR makes officials in danger of becoming obsolete and it's the officials themselves in control of it. They're in a slightly lose/lose position here. If they work it properly then it's the first step towards referees going full stop.

Morinho on VAR: "Only thieves complain about introduction of security cameras".