MW6: September 3/4 Didn’t we just play
- Thread starter Mighty Joe Young
- Start date
Regarding VAR, of the many, many issues with its implementation are the complete abandonment of some of its core elements.
- overturning clear and obvious errors.
What was there about that foul on Erickson that called back the Arsenal goal? That was probably a 50/50 decision. Sometimes it would get called, sometimes not and rightly so. Since when is a 50/50 call an obvious error?
- the on field review
Is a complete and utter joke and exists solely for PR reasons. The Premier League wanted to make it more transparent. The VAR ref has told the field ref that he made a mistake (either directly or by inference) . so the call is always reversed. (I think one on field review in the past three years resulted in the original call standing). But, if everyone knows it’s a joke, doesn’t that make the PR element even worse?
But the really disturbing aspect is , regardless of how it became a VAR decision, why are they getting such obvious calls wrong?
- overturning clear and obvious errors.
What was there about that foul on Erickson that called back the Arsenal goal? That was probably a 50/50 decision. Sometimes it would get called, sometimes not and rightly so. Since when is a 50/50 call an obvious error?
- the on field review
Is a complete and utter joke and exists solely for PR reasons. The Premier League wanted to make it more transparent. The VAR ref has told the field ref that he made a mistake (either directly or by inference) . so the call is always reversed. (I think one on field review in the past three years resulted in the original call standing). But, if everyone knows it’s a joke, doesn’t that make the PR element even worse?
But the really disturbing aspect is , regardless of how it became a VAR decision, why are they getting such obvious calls wrong?
If they happened to an offender in the box, would VAR have ever overturned it into a PK? I don't think on a hundred years. Just a ridiculous standard.
Effectively absolving themselves for all the other terrible VAR calls this weekend, by mentioning only these two. There were what, eight or nine howlers?
And the obvious Bullshit re: the attacker getting the benefit of the doubt on offside, and not doing these microscopic analyses. Stinks to high heaven.
Their correction for MW7 is give Mike Dean three assignments Match officials for Matchweek 7 (premierleague.com)
I know - just saying that the renewed brow furrowing by the EPL towards PGMOL is without Webb having even been really on-the-job yet. It’s going to get even worse before it gets better.
The big issue I have is that when VAR refers the on field ref to the monitor it virtually guarentees an overturn because the on field ref thinks there must be some reason he was sent there plus he doesn’t want to embarrass his VAR colleague. For that reason alone I wish VAR was not run by the same referee pool as the on field ref.
Also, if VAR is only supposed to correct clear and obvious errors then VAR only gets 30 seconds and full speed replays. If you can’t spot anything in that time then it’s not clear and obvious.
Also, if VAR is only supposed to correct clear and obvious errors then VAR only gets 30 seconds and full speed replays. If you can’t spot anything in that time then it’s not clear and obvious.
The "clear and obvious" standard is just one of those things that has to be clearly defined in practice, with concrete examples, to be workable. Unsurprisingly its a complete shit show because it is not defined in any meaningful way, so the interpretation just changes wildly from situation to situation and referee to referee.
I don't have a problem in the abstract with the Odegaard situation being called a foul. In a vacuum, I probably call it a foul too if I'm reffing that match and have a good look. Under the current shit show rules, if that goal was scored against Arsenal, I would certainly want it called back.
But was it "clear and obviously" an error not to call the foul? I'm not so sure about that. The thing about fouls is that contact is a necessary but insufficient criterion for fouling. You absolutely cannot simply refer to the fact of contact, or contact without touching the ball, as sufficient evidence for a foul because players contact each other all the time. A huge part of football is riding challenges, getting contacted while you have the ball and not falling over. Everything always comes down to the much more subjective question of whether the contact was truly disruptive enough to the other player to knock them down or impede them from some action they were taking. In this case, I think it was actually very borderline. Odegaard made the challenge, contacted Eriksen, and he went down very easily looking to buy the foul. If the play hadn't ended in a goal, Eriksen would have just got up, started running again, and nobody would have thought twice about the entire situation because its the type of thing that happens a million times a game and can get reasonably called either way.
In some ways, I think it might be better not to have VAR involved in this kind of thing at all. I would be perfectly fine with VAR being utilized for judging offsides on goals, penalty decisions, and red card decisions and nothing beyond that.
I don't have a problem in the abstract with the Odegaard situation being called a foul. In a vacuum, I probably call it a foul too if I'm reffing that match and have a good look. Under the current shit show rules, if that goal was scored against Arsenal, I would certainly want it called back.
But was it "clear and obviously" an error not to call the foul? I'm not so sure about that. The thing about fouls is that contact is a necessary but insufficient criterion for fouling. You absolutely cannot simply refer to the fact of contact, or contact without touching the ball, as sufficient evidence for a foul because players contact each other all the time. A huge part of football is riding challenges, getting contacted while you have the ball and not falling over. Everything always comes down to the much more subjective question of whether the contact was truly disruptive enough to the other player to knock them down or impede them from some action they were taking. In this case, I think it was actually very borderline. Odegaard made the challenge, contacted Eriksen, and he went down very easily looking to buy the foul. If the play hadn't ended in a goal, Eriksen would have just got up, started running again, and nobody would have thought twice about the entire situation because its the type of thing that happens a million times a game and can get reasonably called either way.
In some ways, I think it might be better not to have VAR involved in this kind of thing at all. I would be perfectly fine with VAR being utilized for judging offsides on goals, penalty decisions, and red card decisions and nothing beyond that.
Last edited:
To your point about the subjectivity of this exercise - couple of years ago at Old Trafford, Origi gets caught on similar contact from Rashford (coming through the player protecting the ball with his back turned) leading directly to a United goal, and VAR did not rule it a clear-and-obvious error. Similarly to you, I think that's the right interpretation, but the selective application of these standards makes it a crapshoot. Pick a standard, give examples of what the standard for a foul in these situations is / is not, add language around simulation and/or exaggeration of contact, and see how a clearly defined set of rules performs.
VAR is fine in any other league. This is purely a PMGOL issue and needs to be treated as such.
I’ve railed on this in many places, but if I were to make a few points, I’d stick to these:
1. VAR referees are dedicated and separate from the on-field staff. Make it absolutely clear that the goal of their profession is to correct on-field errors in applying the laws of the game.
3. Do the damn math, use the technology, and create dynamic offside error lines. You know the position of the ball, you know your framerate, get the players’ speed, and adjust thickness accordingly. The thin lines have made these decisions completely arbitrary. They aren’t even remotely related to the intent of the rule. Players are not gaining an advantage being millimeters offside.
4. Subjective decisions are limited to a short period of real-time or half speed review (at most).
5. VAR officials are particularly tasked with stamping simulation out of the game. If a player goes down without contact they have the authority to alert the center referee and award cards.
I’ve railed on this in many places, but if I were to make a few points, I’d stick to these:
1. VAR referees are dedicated and separate from the on-field staff. Make it absolutely clear that the goal of their profession is to correct on-field errors in applying the laws of the game.
3. Do the damn math, use the technology, and create dynamic offside error lines. You know the position of the ball, you know your framerate, get the players’ speed, and adjust thickness accordingly. The thin lines have made these decisions completely arbitrary. They aren’t even remotely related to the intent of the rule. Players are not gaining an advantage being millimeters offside.
4. Subjective decisions are limited to a short period of real-time or half speed review (at most).
5. VAR officials are particularly tasked with stamping simulation out of the game. If a player goes down without contact they have the authority to alert the center referee and award cards.
Yes, but I liked the high brow language of "necessary but insufficient" so I ignored that.
That’s fine, just confirming my own understanding or lack thereof. I agree with your point otherwise.
Is the bolded the actual standard? No snark intended. I've found myself pondering that a lot lately as I watch more and more games as a neutral.
Shielding is almost its own category unto itself. But generally, I think defenders are called for going thru the back regardless of how soft the contact is. Probably one of the easiest things to simulate/dive, and hardest to regulate.
Don't you DARE ask about rule 2 lol
More substantively, I agree with 1.
Can you expand on number 3. What does a thicker line do? I'm not being glib/snarky here either. I still think there needs to be some more clarity about what the line means. For example, is the rule that the attacker in question in onside UNLESS he's past the thick line?
I've said this here before, but I've always thought using a footprint would make the rule easier. I don't particularly care if an attacker is leaning offside (yes, you can score a goal with your head or midsection, big whoop). However, if he has a full STEP ahead of the defender (i.e. attacker's front foot planted ahead of last defender's* back foot) , then it's clearly offside. If he has half a step (i.e. attacker's front foot is ahead of last defender's back foot* but it's in the air and not planted), I'd give that advantage to the attacker. It might start looking like hockey a bit with attackers lifting up a leg to ensure they don't STEP offside, but I'm all for Mbappe studying Hideo Nomo's windup to get his weight moving in the right direction as quickly as possible without planting his front foot. The Scandanavians, Eastern Euros, and Canadians, as common hockey-soccer dual athletes, would be at a slight advantage here. Plus, can you imagine awkward attackers trying to learn this skill? The skits write themselves here. Regardless, Timo Werner was JUST called offside based on any interpretation of the rule.
I love number 4. NFL is brutal with freeze- and frame-by-frame review. Just watch it in real time, or like you said once/twice with half speed, to help process visual data and make a call. Time limit is crucial here. 30 secs for fouls/yellows, 1 minute for goals/reds/second yellows.
I'm in agreement generally with 5, but there has to be a high standard for this too. I truly don't mind when a player feels contact and goes down, provided the player doesn't get up and whine after there's no call. Defenders always get pissy about this, but I think the sport would be better served with more no calls, to avoid punishing a defender for successfully getting position. In general, I think we want to encourage attackers to keep their feet and I think no calls when there's some contact but not enough to illegally impede the desired movement of the attacker (!and now we're back to the standard of most fouls I keyed on from @Morgan's Magic Snowplow post above!) does that without disrupting the flow or having refs influence games too much.
*Don't try to get pedantic on me fellow Breakfast with Gazzans! We both know the rule, now shush.
The offside decisions are made with a precision tighter than the capability of the equipment, rendering the calls almost completely arbitrary.
Going through some math...
EPL players regularly break 20MPH in their sprints. We'll use 17.5MPH in this example because the numbers render conveniently and it isn't an extreme speed. 17.5 MPH is just over 25 feet per second. The framerate of the cameras used to determine offside is stated by the Premier League to be 50 frames per second. This makes for fairly simple math. There are 6" of error in a player's position if he is running at 17.5MPH. That doesn't even account for movement speed of the goal scoring parts of the body that are flailing around, but we won't overcomplicate this.
But wait, it's worse.
Kicking a ball at a reasonable speed means the foot is moving around 65 feet per second or more. How are you going to determine when the ball was struck? I think if there's really interest in getting these decisions made correctly it wouldn't be unfeasible to add instrumentation to the ball that would allow for an accurate timestamp on the ball being hit.
So, the crux of my argument is that this accumulated error can't be dismissed in favor of an accuracy that doesn't exist. The thickness of the line needs to account for a player's speed at the frame they've arbitrarily chosen as the point the ball is struck. The slight thickening of the lines they did was essentially meaningless compared to the scope of the error.
Realistically, I'd like to see this law called in its true spirit. Is the attacker gaining an advantage? The original problem we were trying to solve was cherry picking. Two guys running within a few inches of each other shouldn't be a determining factor. While I don't think it would be overly difficult to legislate it that way, the inherent corruption in the game would make it untenable.
Reading on a couple UK forums that if the Queen is indeed dead, they'll cancel games this weekend.
It is, but it makes sense. It's just hard to compare to the US because we don't have a figurehead like that, but I totally understand why they'd cancel.
I'm on your side (no pun intended) in this discussion, but how often is a player at a full sprint - or even close to one - at the moment an offside decision is rendered? Almost never, I'd wager.
Would love to have you! Hopefully they got that absolute stinker out of their system last night and are ready to go for the new audience.
Last night was their first loss in 2022 I think (aside from the cup semi-final) and probably up there for worst game during that time along with the draw with Greuther Fürth, which had it been a win, would have meant UCL.
If they get back to what they were doing, I think you guys are going to be completely charmed by this club and their style of play.
Okay, but the math still applies. Cut the top speed in half again. At a jog, there’s still 3” of error. If a player is moving explosively as a ball is struck, it’s still going to be a significant uncertainty, far more than they’re allowing for.
Union v Koln Sunday at 9:30 then. Let's hope Pefok is back. At least Milner won't start.
He wasn't even on the bench for last night, so I'm not getting my hopes up yet. After the stinker they produced last night though, some help would be, well, helpful.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/sep/09/premier-league-clubs-fear-more-games-will-be-postponed-next-weekend
it seems to make more sense to play this weekend, and postpone next weekend b'c of the shifting of resources for the funeral etc esp with the international break right after
it seems to make more sense to play this weekend, and postpone next weekend b'c of the shifting of resources for the funeral etc esp with the international break right after