Thought we needed a specific thread on this.
I'm asking the question without being 100% sure of the answer. I've generally been inclined to put bad decisions down to mistakes, sometimes incompetence and sometimes footballing bias. But what we saw tonight was genuinely strange. The VAR official clearing a bad offside decision in about 3 seconds, seemingly without drawing the lines? Er, that's just not how it's done.
It's a measure of just how flagrantly wrong that was, that even the PGMOL lot have come out and admiited there was a major F**k up, claiming "human error" as part of their damage limitation exercise. But it's very, very hard to imagine how the VAR official can have somehow forgotten that his job is to draw the lines when checking an offside call. I mean that is what he has to do - that's it, it's not something you can just go "oops, forgot to do that, ah well I'll make the call anyway". You could wonder if maybe his technology stopped working, so he decides just to do by naked eye. But the problem there is that (a) he took about 3 seconds to give his technology the chance to work, and (b) it was still obviously onside by naked eye, so how could he manage to get it wrong even in that scenario?
Then you add to it the fact the same VAR guy induced the ref to change his initial correct decision on Jones' yellow (but no, let's make it a red) card. And doing so by initially showing the ref a still which completely distorted the reality of Jones' totally genuine attempt to play the ball, something that was totally obvious to anybody that's ever watched football.
The whole officiating, especially by VAR, looks like somebody really didn't want us going top of the league tonight.
And then you look at the series of bizarre red cards we've already had this season, as Klopp introduces a seriously dangerous looking Liverpool 2.0.
And then you start thinking back to VAR not seeing things like Everton's blatant penalty against City in our last tight title race.
To state the obvious, there's huge money involved in footy nowadays. And, as some people insisted during the Saudi's transfer window raids, "everybody has their price". I think it is now looking more and more likely that some of our officials have had their price met.
It may be that this has been the case for years. Maybe it's always been the case - there have been some officials who will take a bung - it wouldn't be surprising, and it's been proved it's been happening many times in other leagues - there's no real reason to think England is immune. But in the past you could put it down to refereeing error, only getting one look in real time etc. With VAR, this no longer holds, and it's just getting very hard to come with plausible explanations for some of the weird decisions. Up to now most of us have been able to believe it's just incompetence, or maybe footballing bias. But after tonight's farce, these relatively innocent explanations are getting really hard to believe.
Hmm, incompetent, inept, maybe but I’d stop short of corruption, the PGMOL are not fit for purpose, they have admitted that human error was to blame, well hang on, wasn’t the whole idea of VAR. to prevent human error and assist the onfield referee come to a fair decision on contentious issues??
If a VAR assistant can’t set the offside cameras properly how can he/she make any decisions, the groundsmen cut their lines with laser precision for this very purpose so how the F**k can a VAR get it so wrong??
I knew immediately that the offside decision was made too quickly, compounded by the replays on tv where even with the naked eye Diaz was onside,
Then the Curtis Red card, …..in slo mo it looks bad, but so too will someone giving out a headbutt to another, or a crash test dummy getting smashed in a car wreck, it WILL look horrendous,
What really irked me though was that VAR’s total misunderstanding of the game they officiate on, anyone who has played the game knows that if a player gets to a ball first in a 50-50 has indeed won that challenge and that should be it, Curtis won the ball, simple as that, his follow through although unavoidable contacts the opponents leg….yellow card at worse…
If the VAR had a ex professional sat aside him/her it might have made a difference, doubtful but possible,
That still image on the pitch side monitor was the first thing the onfield Ref saw, that image was imprinted in his mind, that undoubtedly made him see a straight red offence, which in real time ply wasn’t, that image distorted his own initial view, which ironically was the correct one,
It’s abundantly clear that VAR in the EPL doesn’t work, why ? Because of the PGMOL insisting that they have to put their oar in and be in control, VAR works in every other sport where it is used, from Rugby Union & League, Tennis, etc
Like I said the PGMOL are the problem, we see evidence every week in almost every game, where the PGMOL influences the VAR who will look after his mate on the pitch and subsequently when the VAR is a referee he knows his mate will have his back,
The actual VAR operator will just do what he’s instructed to do by……the PGMOL, if you want to categorise that as corruption well that’s your opinion, to me it’s inept and not worthy and has no place in the modern game, VAR will and does work, it just needs ex professional players Sat with the VAR and not the PGMOL !!
YNWA
