Referees/VAR in the Premier League

[Batard]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

That was Lee Mason but the criticism still applies.

 

The standard, given the league's standing in the world, should be so much better. There's probably only a handful at best of top class referees who you could envisage could be at international tournaments/elite level. For me, they are Anthony Taylor, Michael Oliver and Andre Marriner. Controversy doesn't seem to follow them as much as anyone else. While that's still not a barometer of how good they could be/are, it does still speak for their ability.

The rest are all average at best. Craig Pawson, Lee Mason, Jon Moss, Mike Jones, Kevin Friend, Paul Tierney, Stuart Attwell, Chris Kavanagh, Mike Dean, Graham Scott all fall in that category. They outweigh the good refs far too much, which is bad. 

He's a proper shit ref 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

That was Lee Mason but the criticism still applies.

 

The standard, given the league's standing in the world, should be so much better. There's probably only a handful at best of top class referees who you could envisage could be at international tournaments/elite level. For me, they are Anthony Taylor, Michael Oliver and Andre Marriner. Controversy doesn't seem to follow them as much as anyone else. While that's still not a barometer of how good they could be/are, it does still speak for their ability.

The rest are all average at best. Craig Pawson, Lee Mason, Jon Moss, Mike Jones, Kevin Friend, Paul Tierney, Stuart Attwell, Chris Kavanagh, Mike Dean, Graham Scott all fall in that category. They outweigh the good refs far too much, which is bad. 

I used to think Michael Oliver was our only good ref. Now I think he’s dogshit too, he’s had an awful season as a referee.

[Storts]

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I used to think Michael Oliver was our only good ref. Now I think he’s dogshit too, he’s had an awful season as a referee.

He believed his own hype. All about him. Used to think he was good too but he's as bad as it gets these days, just wants to be a personality 

[Cicero]

He's still the best in the country. Which says a lot about the current standard of officiating. 

[Honey Honey]

We've had this a while now and I have genuinely never come across meltdown errors in a great deal of Newcastle games. Maybe any? Next season when we are playing in the Championship and there is no VAR I'll probably notice a difference.

[RandoEFC+]

I don't think I've commented on this for a while. I think you just keep it with a few small changes:

- Referee/linesman needs to commit to an on field decision before going to VAR. If 60 seconds isn't enough to find evidence to overturn the decision then it isn't clear and obvious and the on field decision stands.

- Keep using VAR for offsides but get rid of the geometry kit. Pause the replay at the point where the pass is released and if it's visible to the human eye that the on field decision is incorrect then overturn it.

- Sack off the screen beside the pitch. If the VAR official can't tell the referee the on field decision needs to be overturned without the referee having a second look himself then it isn't clear and obvious, get on with the game.

Taking this approach removes the effort to go from 95% refereeing accuracy without replay assistance to 100%, and replaces it with an effort to get 98-99% of decisions right and eliminate the absolute howlers. This is what VAR was supposed to be in the first place, and yet we've never seen them try to implement it this way.

Outside of VAR you still need to look at handball rules and, if anyone aside from me is still remotely arsed, simulation, which remains the biggest form of blatant cheating in football yet is actually punished more leniently over time rather than more harshly. Don't dare to have both arms in tact while defending in the area and having the ball twatted at you from 2 yards away or collide with someone on the turn whilst being 1cm closer to your own goal than your closest team mate though.

[Coma+]

52 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I don't think I've commented on this for a while. I think you just keep it with a few small changes:

- Referee/linesman needs to commit to an on field decision before going to VAR. If 60 seconds isn't enough to find evidence to overturn the decision then it isn't clear and obvious and the on field decision stands.

- Keep using VAR for offsides but get rid of the geometry kit. Pause the replay at the point where the pass is released and if it's visible to the human eye that the on field decision is incorrect then overturn it.

- Sack off the screen beside the pitch. If the VAR official can't tell the referee the on field decision needs to be overturned without the referee having a second look himself then it isn't clear and obvious, get on with the game.

Taking this approach removes the effort to go from 95% refereeing accuracy without replay assistance to 100%, and replaces it with an effort to get 98-99% of decisions right and eliminate the absolute howlers. This is what VAR was supposed to be in the first place, and yet we've never seen them try to implement it this way.

Outside of VAR you still need to look at handball rules and, if anyone aside from me is still remotely arsed, simulation, which remains the biggest form of blatant cheating in football yet is actually punished more leniently over time rather than more harshly. Don't dare to have both arms in tact while defending in the area and having the ball twatted at you from 2 yards away or collide with someone on the turn whilst being 1cm closer to your own goal than your closest team mate though.

[LFCMike]

 

[Lucas]

2 hours ago, LFCMike said:

 

Makes a change from them using thicker officials.

[Burning Gold]

On 10/06/2021 at 19:24, LFCMike said:

 

I must be missing something here because the thickness of the lines makes absolutely no difference. How will this help?

[Happy Blue]

Has it been any better this season? 

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 hours ago, Happy Blue said:

Has it been any better this season? 

No they've been awful this season, I dunno if it's any worse than previous seasons but it's certainly not better.

I still think there's no saving the officials in this country until Mike Riley has been loaded into a spaceship and shot into the sun. It's not hard to imagine why the referees are so poor when literally one of the worst top flight referees in our lifetimes is at the head of the officials in our country.

[Stan]

It's not better, but it's not worse.

There's been some howlers and real head-scratchers of decisions. But probably the best thing is that they've not been as regular.

I think I remember last season there was a spate of embarrassing mistakes from referees/VAR officials for a good number of weeks. 

 

[Dave]

40 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

No they've been awful this season, I dunno if it's any worse than previous seasons but it's certainly not better.

I still think there's no saving the officials in this country until Mike Riley has been loaded into a spaceship and shot into the sun. It's not hard to imagine why the referees are so poor when literally one of the worst top flight referees in our lifetimes is at the head of the officials in our country.

Definitely. I dont want to excuse the officiating we've seen for the previous three seasons since VAR was introduced as its clearly been abysmal but the amount of rule changes he has made has only added to the problem by complicating officiating to the stage where nobody seems capable of memorising everything every season.

[Mel81x+]

I feel like VAR is going to take a few more years to not get better but to be expected as the x-factor in deciding games. The implementations and the rules keep flipping to compliment the faults on either side of the fence and the bigger issue is that just like the way fouls are considered across the globe, VAR is also falling into a similar trap where phrases like "clear and obvious" are more aligned with how a ref wants to see it vs how it is. Having said that, its definitely improving from what it was earlier to what is now.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Mel81x

[Bluewolf]

I certainly don't think it's improved at all.... I would expect there to be issues in the beginning but season on season you would expect improvements no matter how small they are but some of the decisions or lack of in some cases are baffling... Also these elbow/toe offsides need to go as it does nothing for the good flow of football... clear and obvious should be clear and obvious, not 5 minutes of running a line down the screen to prove an attacker had his earlobe in an offside position... 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Bluewolf said:

I certainly don't think it's improved at all.... I would expect there to be issues in the beginning but season on season you would expect improvements no matter how small they are but some of the decisions or lack of in some cases are baffling... Also these elbow/toe offsides need to go as it does nothing for the good flow of football... clear and obvious should be clear and obvious, not 5 minutes of running a line down the screen to prove an attacker had his earlobe in an offside position... 

Yeah, nobody asked for every offside decision to be put under a microscope. It's the obviously wrong decisions that we could see on replay that had people annoyed and is where people thought referees could use the help and extra pair of eyes. A player's left nipple possibly being off by .01mm when the rest of him is on is not something anybody should have ever possibly contemplated with VAR... yet that's where we've seen officials focus.

FIFA probably need to come in and give referees a set standard of what "clear and obvious" is meant to mean all around the world. Referees should be mic'd up, because even if people disagree with them... we should at least know the reasoning behind some of their decisions as it might make them more forgivable (we all make mistakes after all, if we can understand the rationale we can at least understand why a mistake was made in the first place).

VAR was brought in to make their hard job easier - to provide assistance to the officials. Instead it's taken away my confidence in officials being able to make consistent decisions even with technological assistance. 

[Bluewolf]

3 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Yeah, nobody asked for every offside decision to be put under a microscope. It's the obviously wrong decisions that we could see on replay that had people annoyed and is where people thought referees could use the help and extra pair of eyes. A player's left nipple possibly being off by .01mm when the rest of him is on is not something anybody should have ever possibly contemplated with VAR... yet that's where we've seen officials focus.

FIFA probably need to come in and give referees a set standard of what "clear and obvious" is meant to mean all around the world. Referees should be mic'd up, because even if people disagree with them... we should at least know the reasoning behind some of their decisions as it might make them more forgivable (we all make mistakes after all, if we can understand the rationale we can at least understand why a mistake was made in the first place).

VAR was brought in to make their hard job easier - to provide assistance to the officials. Instead it's taken away my confidence in officials being able to make consistent decisions even with technological assistance. 

Clear and obvious was laid out at the beginning but for some reason over here at least we have reduced it to millimetres to make decisions... Giving refs microphones could be a way forward like they do in Rugby or at the very least have both the ref and whoever is looking after VAR be available at the end of the match to discuss the decision making behind it. All the time they are not being challenged they are effectively being given a free pass to carry on as they see fit and as we know from experience this leads to erratic calls from one game to another.. 

I don't know how well implemented it is in other leagues around the world regarding the offside rule?? Is it the same or does it vary from league to league?? I appreciate that in European competition it has to be the same across the board for fairness but in the respective leagues it may be being managed differently... I don't watch enough Spanish/German/French football to comment in that regard.. 

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

Just now, Bluewolf said:

I don't watch enough Spanish/German/French football to comment in that regard.. 

I don't watch much non-English football tbh, but I've watched a bit of La Liga and Serie A this season. Tbh, I think their refs are a bit... annoying because they seem very keen to stop the flow of a match much more regularly than English refs are... I think their VAR is more consistently applied than it is here.

But I also don't know if I've watched enough to comment that with 100% certainty. And I'm sure if it's a problem with our officials, it's a problem with officials all over the world... not just here.

[Bluewolf]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

And I'm sure if it's a problem with our officials, it's a problem with officials all over the world... not just here.

Probably... It's never been an easy job but with onside monitors and VAR in use at least if they make an informed decision and it's right a ref would be respected for that even if the losing side are not happy with the result, As it stands though they still come in for criticism for having all that technology and not using it properly... 

[LFCMike]

 

[RandoEFC+]

"After matches". I wonder how much scope this leaves them to release parts of conversations where it suits them? Sounds like a positive step in theory but I have such little trust in their willingness to embrace accountability.

A live feed that some anoraks on social media could listen to during the game and then live-tweet about? That would be transparency.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

"After matches". I wonder how much scope this leaves them to release parts of conversations where it suits them? Sounds like a positive step in theory but I have such little trust in their willingness to embrace accountability.

A live feed that some anoraks on social media could listen to during the game and then live-tweet about? That would be transparency.

Agree with all of that 200% - it's a step in the right direction, but really I think all of us would be liking to see some real transparency.

[Stan]

8 hours ago, LFCMike said:

 

 

8 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

"After matches". I wonder how much scope this leaves them to release parts of conversations where it suits them? Sounds like a positive step in theory but I have such little trust in their willingness to embrace accountability.

A live feed that some anoraks on social media could listen to during the game and then live-tweet about? That would be transparency.

 

6 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Agree with all of that 200% - it's a step in the right direction, but really I think all of us would be liking to see some real transparency.

Same. I long for the day that these conversations can be heard real-time in the stadium and on TV. 

Step in the right direction, but still not enough. It's incredibly annoying that the commentators on Sky and BT can hear the conversations and have sometimes let out the outcome before the referee is even given a chance to signal. For some reason that infuriates me. 

[Dave]

Playing devil's advocate I can see why referees have been hesitant to agree to this because nobody will ever want to interview a referee for a good performance. It will just be for the 50/50 and crap decisions.