The on field referee/officials didn't get it right though, and "right" is still debatable. I have no doubt if that had been United they'd have found a way to draw the lines so that it was onside. VAR isn't good for the spectacle of the sport, I don't see how anyone could see it differently. Goal line technology? Great. It's instantaneous and works perfectly and without dispute 99.9% of the time. VAR in terms of its impact on the spectacle of the sport? ******* terrible. They get just about as much wrong as they used to without it, except now there's far less excuse for it and it interrupts the game more than ever. Until we have the technology for fully automated and instantaneous (or at least nigh on) offsides, VAR will continue to ruin the spectacle of football as a sport and continue to be a complete pile of needless ****.
Again, VAR is referees. They got the decision right. Wanting it to be wrong doesn’t make it wrong. A centimetre, an inch, offside has always been offside. Agreed with the time it takes though, always have. It’s because of the inept nature of those referees that makes it take so long. I haven’t seen enough PL football this season to be able to tell you how many offsides they’ve got wrong. Those who think the goal is given without VAR haven’t watched football over the 30 years. United and the rest of the big clubs got every single decision like this in the old days. No VAR and that lino is flagging quicker than you can say ‘Roy Keane’s angry bulging neck veins’.
They are bringing that in next season as clubs has sewn sense. Mind you probably find a way to mess that up .
Really ? An inch has always been offside ? Really ? Maybe you were not around during the "daylight" offside rule or the "level" period ?
I only found out about goal line technology being used in the Championship when Cleverley bundled the keeper over the line against Stoke, and that was in the November, which goes to show how uninvasive its introduction was (terrible decision mind you!). VAR on the other hand, get in the bin
Man Utd have had the look and the luck of cup winners all the way through their campaign. Endless poor performances, coming back from the dead and great fortune too with decisions. I fully expect them to beat City in the final. Btw I’ve been trying to find when we last had the same final two seasons running. I think it may have been as far back as 1896. Any thoughts?
Could hear the relief in Lee Dixon's voice when VAR ruled that goal out and he avoids commentating on City vs Coventry. Same relief for the FA sponsorship / TV revenue dept as well.
Actually he wanted the goal to be given saying "go on give it" As a City fan he probably couldn't care less who they played as they'll win.
Hear, hear! The way the offside rule is interpreted now by VAR is nothing to do with the reason why the rule was first introduced well over a hundred years ago.
I was listening to the game on the radio in the car on the way home from somewhere and Clinton Morrison of all people on co-comms called it offside as soon as he saw the first replay. So unless he's also now being run off computerised technology I'm not sure it's quite true to say that's the only way that particular one could be detected. If anything the 'made for tv' lines make it look closer than it would have been in reality.
Are "the made for TV lines" just for us, or is that what the reviewers are seeing ? If the former, why can't we see what they are seeing and using to assess - clear and transparent. The trouble with allowing VAR to give the 1 inch offsides, maybe 1mm offsides (if "offside is offside") is you have to assess at the very millisecond the ball is passed and I doubt they have the ability to do that. A millisecond either side can give a different "100% correct outcome".
The ‘goal’ was offside. You can’t rewrite history just because you dislike the club involved. I’d have loved it to have stood. It would have been wonderful to see a Championship club deservedly reach the final. And hilarious to see Ten Haag try to put his usual positive spin on United losing from 3-0 up. But it was offside. Just. Simple as.
Great word there "uninvasive" !. As you say VAR is not fit for purpose. The irony from all of this is that pre VAR if the linesman kept his flag down and a goal given then nobody would be complaining whereas if he put his flag up and the goal was chalked off then everyone would be clammering for VAR !!.
VAR in the FA Cup for me is an issue in its self. At the moment it is only in use at premier league grounds or at Wembley, which means that the vast majority of games in the competition don't have VAR. To run any competition with two different sets or rules, or rule criteria is quite unusual. For me, if it can't be used everywhere, ten it shouldn't be used at all. if you take the 2019 quarter final between Swansea and City, there was no VAR. If there was then the winning penalty decision would have been over turned and the game possibly going to extra time. It can't be one thing for some clubs, but not others.
Yes, they're just for us. They're made thicker to illustrate it clearer on tv: https://www.premierleague.com/news/1488423 They also tried the 'showing the sausage factory' approach to deciding offsides and drawing lines when it first came in and people ripped it apart. So they went back to doing what happens elsewhere and just show the end product, neatly tied up for broadcasters. I don't really agree with the premise of your second paragraph that they have to "assess the very millisecond the ball is passed" to reach a correct/fair decision. I think they simply have to make a decision based on the best evidence available. If the evidence is inconclusive or unavailable for some technical reason then obviously they'll stick with the on field decision. But otherwise the best footage they have of the moment the ball is passed is good enough. This drive for perfection is a bit of a cancer in football at the moment. It's leading to some really extreme commentary around officiating - see Forest's ridiculous tweet yesterday. Referees aren't perfect, VAR isn't perfect, the rules aren't perfect... yet every week there are managers, players, pundits and fans holding them to that completely unrealistic standard.
In the cases where it has been shown, they have someone rolling the frames 1 by 1 to get the point the ball is played. I'd say in some cases it's hard to judge this with any accuracy (without a ball sensor linked to TV images with very fine precision tech that doesn't exist). If you had a case where the VAR ref thought ball contact was over a couple of frames, the easiest way to work it out is by taking an average of the levels of offside over the 2 frames. For instance if the forward is 1mm onside in frame 1, but 2mm offside in frame 2, then he's offside. This is all moot as it takes too long to analyse 1 frame already. Unless... You increase the number of people working on VAR. Offside specialist VAR groups are checking offsides live, whilst another VAR person is checking handballs and they all report back to the VAR ref. I don't like VAR at all, would prefer it shelved. Nottingham Forest should be chucked out the league though for insinuating it's fixed.
Here's the FA's updated advice for the TV-watching public, released shortly after yesterday's gripping semi-final in which the gallant Reds of Manchester took their place at Wembley for this year's FA Cup final: "The line on the left is to be used when adjudicating offside decisions by VAR for all participating clubs (except for decisions affecting Man City, Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs, oh and Luton, when the line on the right is available at the discretion of Stuart Attwell etc) [Incidentally copies of this year's programme - entitled "Welcome Back my Friends to the Manchester show that never ends, it's City v United again!" - were published last week and are available to fans for £40.]
My point was that they simply can't be accurate enough to make the right decision based on an inch either way. If you freeze the frame when a pass is made, is that the frame the foot touches the ball to pass it, the frame the ball direction changes, the frame the ball is no longer touching the foot, etc, given player movement, each may well give a different "100% correct because the computer says so" decision.
I don't know what point you're trying to make other than to defend the current system at all cost. Technology was needed to show that the 'offside' was by - to use a popular quote - a toenails width, regardless of any lines added by TV (his position didn't change after the introduction of those lines). My point was that the technology shouldn't be used for something that miniscule and hard to detect - keep it for the howler where a massive unfair advantage has been gained, unlike yesterday's zero advantage. 'Offside is offside regardless of distance' is utterly meaningless and just a convenient sound-bite for officials to use as justification for the way they apply the rules. People saying the lines are just for TV - those ones are, but calibrated lines are used in their decisions. Then it comes down to the screen resolution and which frame the footage is stopped on when the ball is kicked. When it's as close as that, those things are the difference between onside and off. If the frame rate is high enough but the resolution isn't sharp enough to show the ball unblurred, a different frame is used to show when the ball is played otherwise it appears as though it hasn't left the foot due to the 'spread' of the ball. That kind of forensic accuracy - which isn't actually accurate but a limitation - is not what being offside and gaining an advantage is about when the rule was introduced and is therefore unnecessary. Clinton Morrison is not a reliable source of information on anything. If I heard him say something, my gut reaction would be the opposite is true. 'But he was right'. Yep, he guessed a 50/50 call based on how the current system - imo - incorrectly uses the tech. Listening to him trying to explain things on that Sky panel is a very hard watch as he clearly lacks the capability of expressing himself in any way that could be described as coherent. I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time in a room full of clocks. He makes Merson sound like Alan Watts.
But that's precisely my point. Even who someone who comes across like an bit of a muppet knew it was offside straight away. The actual commentator agreed as soon as he saw it too, albeit Morrison was first to give his view. I was genuinely surprised when I got back home to see how close it was, because the way they called it on the radio they were both confident almost immediately. And Wright was offside. All the rest of the debate about pixels and lines and resolutions is a complete red herring. You're letting yourself get sucked in by stuff that doesn't matter. There was a big old sales pitch promising a shiny new future but the product we've got us in some ways changes little. I understand why some feel upset about that. Offside has always been called by the officials on the day using the best evidence available. The best evidence available used to be the two completely fallible Mk1 eyeballs issued at birth to the assistant running the line (which failed yesterday, incidentally). Now we have something which is objectively better from an evidence perspective but clearly still not perfect from a delivery point of view. That can be worked on. And really I don't really know what it is you (or others who have similar views) want instead. At best you're talking about moving the trigger point at which an offside is called so now the line is drawn somewhere slightly different, without acknowledging that'll solve nothing. Or you want to engage in some sort of cakeism by trying the impossible and basically saying there should be absolute accuracy, but if that's not achievable then lets just have some vague idea that if a decision isn't close enough then there's no need to check it. As if that wouldn't immediately get mired in tedious debate about when a howler is enough of a howler to qualify for a VAR review. To be honest it'd be far easier if you just say you'd have liked it very much if Man Utd had lost yesterday and you're sad they didn't.
How far offside would a ‘howler’ be? A foot? Two feet? Then what happens if a player is a foot and an inch offside? Do we let that go too? Or do we still have the same debate but of a different distance? You can make the ‘howler’ distance as long as you want and just like yesterday, there’d be moaning that a ‘dream moment’ didn’t occur because of it. I’d be fuming if we’d lost a game like that because of an incorrect decision, just like we all would be. Certain people on here do it all the time. If it had been us and not Man Utd, I’d certainly not be on here bemoaning a correct decision. And neither would you.
I think they said on the MotD highlights that the recording is made at 25 frames per second, which sounds like they can choose the exact moment to judge very accurately, but presumably the ball is in contact with the passing foot for substantially longer than one twenty-fifth of a second. So then it is down to how finely they are judging the lines measuring whether the player is offside or not. Potentially there would be quite a lot of frames to choose from while the ball was still in contact with the foot. Trying to define the decision to that level of accuracy is nonsense.
Agreed - for VAR to work properly they really need to remove the subjectivity out of every offside review rather like they have done in cricket. No-one picks apart the "umpires call" outcome - the program just decides based on an agreed algorithm. If an offside decision is too close to call, if it's coming down to which of the 25 frames you use in a review, and a panel can pick and choose, it should just come back with "referees call" and we move on... quickly.
Maybe this semi automated offside system will make a difference? I agree generally VAR is too subjective to be fautless.
No one picks apart the umpire's call outcome... except the England captain only 2 months ago. Naturally in the face of defeat. https://www.foxsports.com.au/cricke...t/news-story/1c999f7f8ce38725f0851e435edd0793
It's had some pretty high profile critics. I won't derail the thread but some very big names, current and former cricketers, have said they thing it confuses things or defies logic in certain situations. I suspect it just seems less as the ferocity of the debate is a bit calmer than football's 24/7 rage machine I don't think it's a bad idea by the way. Just pointing out for VAR in football though it'll only move the debate elsewhere, not eliminate controversy.
