Everton 1-1 Man Utd - Sunday 1st March, 2020

[Dan+]

That to me is worse than the offside.

Not a jot of integrity.

[LFCMike]

6 minutes ago, Dan said:

That to me is worse than the offside.

Not a jot of integrity.

I thought it was, this confirms it

[CaaC (John)+]

Well, I said it would either be a 1-1 result or we would get hammered, thank fuck we never got the hammering, never saw the game but looking at the highlights we were lucky at the end not going down 2-1  

[RandoEFC+]

What I would love to see is not one of those tables "without VAR", because you can't say if theres a VAR howler in the 12th minute what would have happened otherwise.

I'd rather see the numbers on how many matches have had the results arguably influenced by debatable VAR decisions, like this one and the Burnley Bournemouth game last week. I'd also include games such as our home game vs Brighton where we should have had a stonewall penalty early on for a foul on Walcott but we won anyway. I imagine around 20% of games have had calls made that wouldn't have been made without VAR on penalties, goals, red cards.

It really is hard to take the league table seriously this season apart from the obvious at the top. Any team could probably have had half a dozen points added or taken away from their total based on marginal VAR decisions.

I'm not going to go down the route of rigging or match fixing but I do find it hard to believe that a role reversal with that happening at Old Trafford would have resulted in the same call.

Its worrying how much you see from fans across Twitter and comments sections now that people are losing more and more faith in any integrity or quality of officiating.

[RandoEFC+]

"directly in the line of vision"

"obvious action"

"impacted De Gea's ability to make a save"

[LFCMike]

4 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

"directly in the line of vision"

"obvious action"

"impacted De Gea's ability to make a save"

The offside decision was correct. You should have had a penalty though

[LFCMadLad]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Fine I'm sure by the technicalities of the rulebook that's offside but the bottom line is Sigurdsson made no difference to De Gea's ability to save the ball so for me it isn't in the spirit of the offside rule to disallow that goal. 

It's yet another case of goals being ruled out by a technicality instead of something unfair causing an advantage to the team who scored.

This over-sterilisation of football is eating away at the sporting element of the game. If Sigurdsson wasn't there it would have gone in anyway and it shouldn't need to be more complicated than that. If they could actually be consistent in these decisions you could swallow it easier but it's 100% nailed on a similar goal is scored next weekend and allowed to stand.

I've said from day one that VAR would eat away at the game, and it has. Fucking bores me rigid now. Totally spoiling what should be one of the best seasons in recent memory for me. 

And please, dont anyone come on saying 'oohhhhh it's not VAR... it's the rules ooohhhhh'

Fuck off. Without VAR these pathetic petty rules wouldn't even be in place. Shower of absolute fuckking shiiiiite.

[LFCMike]

Just now, LFCMadLad said:

I've said from day one that VAR would eat away at the game, and it has. Fucking bores me rigid now. Totally spoiling what should be one of the best seasons in recent memory for me. 

And please, dont anyone come on saying 'oohhhhh it's not VAR... it's the rules ooohhhhh'

Fuck off. Without VAR these pathetic petty rules wouldn't even be in place. Shower of absolute fuckking shiiiiite.

They got the offside decision correct though, how can there be any complaints? Where they went wrong was missing the foul on Sigurdsson

[LFCMadLad]

8 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

They got the offside decision correct though, how can there be any complaints? Where they went wrong was missing the foul on Sigurdsson

It's not the decision making I'm talking about as such. It's the whole bag of bollocks that is VAR. I don't know 1 single person that thinks its improved the game as a spectacle. All it's done is over-complicate things to an extend where every single football match, VAR is the topic of conversation. 

Fucking hate it.

[RandoEFC+]

21 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

The offside decision was correct. You should have had a penalty though

I don't know how you can read that and come to this conclusion, and I know you're not being biased because of the two teams involved, I just completely disagree.

People were retweeting the rulebook entry earlier and it says a player is offside if they "clearly impede the view of an opposition player". As those stills show, this is not the case, in fact he clearly isn't impeding De Gea's view.

I think the point where you have to start looking up Paragraph 18 sub-section 4 article 429A.5 to determine whether a player is offside though to try and prove the officials made the right decision is where we're completely lost though. It's a football match not a court of law. I think it's clear that the ball goes in with or without Sigurdsson being there so in the spirit of the rules the goal should have stood. I was ready to accept earlier that it may have been offside by the letter of the law but that also isn't true, and the Premier League's stated reasons for it being ruled out are also objectively incorrect.

As you acknowledge though, even if Sigurdsson is offside the only reason he's there at all is because he gets absolutely cleaned out by Wan Bissaka seconds earlier so it should be a penalty to us.

[Stan]

@RandoEFC you might like this

 

[RandoEFC+]

1 minute ago, Stan said:

@RandoEFC you might like this

 

Seen it but yeah I forwarded that on to my United supporting colleague who's convinced it's offside.

[LFCMike]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

I don't know how you can read that and come to this conclusion, and I know you're not being biased because of the two teams involved, I just completely disagree.

People were retweeting the rulebook entry earlier and it says a player is offside if they "clearly impede the view of an opposition player". As those stills show, this is not the case, in fact he clearly isn't impeding De Gea's view.

I think the point where you have to start looking up Paragraph 18 sub-section 4 article 429A.5 to determine whether a player is offside though to try and prove the officials made the right decision is where we're completely lost though. It's a football match not a court of law. I think it's clear that the ball goes in with or without Sigurdsson being there so in the spirit of the rules the goal should have stood. I was ready to accept earlier that it may have been offside by the letter of the law but that also isn't true, and the Premier League's stated reasons for it being ruled out are also objectively incorrect.

As you acknowledge though, even if Sigurdsson is offside the only reason he's there at all is because he gets absolutely cleaned out by Wan Bissaka seconds earlier so it should be a penalty to us.

Surely he's interfering with play though and therefore De Gea's judgement is interfered with? 

The bigger issue is how the officials have missed the foul

[Machado]

I used to have a different opinion but give me the "hand of god" over VAR any day of the week. 

[Chaaay AFC]

I can see the frustration with VAR, as an Arsenal fan I can't think of one instance where it actually benefitted us. We should of had at least a handful of penalties this year not given and the refs are just making a mess of it. Such a shame they have completely ruined something they should've made the game fairer. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

23 minutes ago, Chaaay AFC said:

I can see the frustration with VAR, as an Arsenal fan I can't think of one instance where it actually benefitted us. We should of had at least a handful of penalties this year not given and the refs are just making a mess of it. Such a shame they have completely ruined something they should've made the game fairer. 

If anything, VAR has made us even more aware of how bad our refs are.

[Chaaay AFC]

3 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If anything, VAR has made us even more aware of how bad our refs are.

That has been the only benefit thus far. It's no surprise we're the league who are having the most issues with it. I don't understand what's so difficult, I'm not into conspiracies of the league being corrupt but you do wonder sometimes. 

[LFCMadLad]

11 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

If anything, VAR has made us even more aware of how bad our refs are.

I said it from the start..  All VAR is is another referee with technology. Anyone who thinks/thought that it would ever work is absolutely off their rocker. 

All it's done is make every single niggly fucking thing get highlighted, whilst slowing the game down and taking away the euphoria. Klopp was asked the other day why he doesn't celebrate goals like he used to. He said "VAR".

Wet wipes will always want everything perfect regardless of what it's doing to the game though.

[Dan+]

VAR's also opened very legitimate questions about the integrity of football in England. Some of what's happened is frankly inexplicable.

[Devil-Dick Willie]

I think VAR should be a quick check for offsides and 'howlers' only. No game stoppages involved. 

[RandoEFC+]

Penalties awarded this season:

Everton 0, Man Utd 10.

Goals against ruled out by VAR this season:

Everton 0, Man Utd 6.

[Danny]

Would de Gea have got the ball? No. But Sigurdsson is still active in an offside position

Though someone pointed out that Sigurdsson was fouled getting into that position?

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

Would de Gea have got the ball? No. But Sigurdsson is still active in an offside position

Though someone pointed out that Sigurdsson was fouled getting into that position?

In what way is he active though? Yes he's there but he doesn't interfere with the ball or any opposition player. And yes he was decked by Wan Bissaka who flew in with a desperate block.

[Danny]

3 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

In what way is he active though? Yes he's there but he doesn't interfere with the ball or any opposition player. And yes he was decked by Wan Bissaka who flew in with a desperate block.

He's sat in front of the balls trajectory and then moves his feet out of the way, he's active mate

[RandoEFC+]

10 minutes ago, Danny said:

He's sat in front of the balls trajectory and then moves his feet out of the way, he's active mate

De Gea is beaten by the deflection regardless of Sigurdsson's position. If you care about the actual sporting aspect of the game instead of what technicalities you can find in sub-section 32.1 paragraph 14b about what active or interfering play is or isn't, then it's a goal. 

I dont imagine it's a coincidence that almost every non-Premier League fan who's commented says it's clearly a goal while us lot are bickering over technicalities and vocabulary. I imagine it's because referees actually have some common sense at their disposal in other countries to help them make decisions.

Ours are obsessed with over analysing every sneeze down to the nth degree so that when they publish their next self-promoting report about officiating in this country they can make up some more stats about how VAR is actually helping them make correct decisions 2% more often than they were before which is better than any other league in the world.

It's horse shit. I honestly cant take this league seriously anymore it's gotten so absurd. And that's not all me being salty about yesterday because I saw the same thing after watching the highlights of Burnley vs Bournemouth last weekend where VAR decisions changed the score from 1-2 to 2-0 over the course of the game. How can that be the way forward?