Forgetting for a moment it involved Watford this time, I believe the penalty should always be given. The argument has always been: if you give a penalty every time there would be 15 penalties in each game. Well if a penalty was given every time defenders would soon be forced to stop doing the holding. Then it would be clear to the ref when a forward was holding to gain an advantage and it would be simple to give a free kick.
It’s the inconsistency or ‘selective decision’ making that is the problem. Had it been up the other end, would VAR have told Atwell to go to the screen? No chance that would ever happen. Which referee would award Watford a controversial penalty on the final minute for an off the ball tussle like that. A result changing decision which would have implications at both ends of the table. It just would not happen, and this is why it’s so unfair. Once you get into grey areas, the bias/prejudice, call it what you like, comes into play. This is why Watford suffer so often from this type of thing.
Technically it was a penalty! However as they said on MOTD that sort of incident happens most weeks but is never acted on, but now Watford's biggest fan NOT, Mike Dean has acted on it, they will now hopefully be more consistant and pick up on that sort of thing from now on.
Dean was VAR for Leeds v Soton according to the PL appointments list for this weekend. John Brooks was covering our game.
Kamara had a good game and his stats around tackles, interceptions etc have been very impressive seeing as he only got here in January. But let's not pretend that wasn't a planned sub of Salah for Mane yesterday with Liverpool away in the UCL on Tuesday night.
The thing that irks me about it is that they weren't even involved in play, neither of them were getting anywhere near the ball regardless of the foul, yet they get rewarded with a free shot at goal. If Jota had gone up for the header and Kucka had tackled him, then fair enough, but that wasn't the case.
My match assessment is that we could and perhaps should have got something from that game, but yet again it was our finishing that let us down. Roy also contributed to our downfall with poor substitutions IMO. This is it we really MUST start finding the net from now on and winning our home games. The ROT must stop NOW and if it does I am still convinced we can stay up. Ben Foster - Yet another good strong performance from him Kiko - Maybe could of been just a bit sharper which might have prevented their 1st goal, but it was a very well executed goal by Liverpool. Kabasele - Another good performance from him, one of our best performers on the day. Samir - Has slipped a little from the form he had for his first few games, but was not too bad. Kamara - Had Salah in his pocket most of the day, my MotM. Louza - A decent performance and should not have been hooked, it should have Kucka IMO. Sissoko - Has been a lot better in his last few games but not yesterday, it was a very inconsistent performance from him. Kucka - Did fine for 60/70 mins, but Roy should have hooked him then instead of Louza as he was knickered for the rest of the game. Sarr - The odd flash of good play but overall not one of his better games, I would have taken him off instead of Cucho. Pedro - Did some great stuff but also some crap stuff too, which is what you might expect from someone so young. Cucho - A Duracell Bunny up front and defensively, and should not have been hooked IMO, possibly joint MotM along with Kamara. Subs: Cleverly, King & Dennis did nothing to enhance our performance which was very disappointing.
And this is the thing that VAR will never fix; it may even make it worse for the 'unfashionable' clubs as there are now 2 opportunities for every tight, subjective decision to go the way of the big club. 1. On-field ref gives contentious decision to big club; VAR guy says 'no clear error to rectify here' 2. On-field ref doesn't give possible decision to big club; VAR guy pores over all possible camera angles before 'recommending' on-field ref looks at monitor to, obviously, give the decision after all. The long existing fact that a debatable decision is rarely given against the big club by most on-field refs anyway means that the VAR just ignores all such incidents. Does anyone seriously believe VAR would have asked the ref to look at the monitor if the Kucka-Jota incident had been Thiago-Dennis? VAR has definitely helped with critical offside decisions as it is the only part of it that is not based upon subjectivity on the part of the officials, but that's about it.
Worse than that, I'd put a modest amount of money if roles were reversed and we scored a goal VAR would find a way to penalise Dennis and rule it out.
Hodgson should know that by now Kucka is an impact substitute or a sixty minute player. Having missed the game due to a reception seems we were unlucky not to get a point. Put in the same level of performances and there is still a slim chance of escaping the drop.
This is almost exactly the same comment made by GT after we'd beaten Chelsea in the old Div2 with a last minute penalty. Micky Droy had been holding Jenkins down at almost every opportunity all game, and then the ref decided to suddenly penalise him and give us a penalty, which won us the game. In the post-match interview, the Chelsea manager (John Neal IIRC) said something along the lines of giving penalties for those types of incidents would lead to about 10 penalties every game. To which GT replied 'yes, but only for one week, eh John?' Brilliant comment and so true. But still we see it at every corner and free kick.
Very true. I refer m'lud to the Kabasele 'foul' that allowed VAR to tell the on-field ref to disallow our equaliser at Leeds. Looking at the table, the more annoying that becomes seeing as how if the ball hadn't gone in VAR should have advised the ref to look at the monitor as it should have been a penalty anyway.
VAR should have no constrictions on it other than the LAWS of FOOTBALL!!! Then everything would be decided by the strict laws of football and not by the whim of whoever is in charge of VAR at any given match, which are caused by the daft interpretations over and above the laws of football imposed on VAR Refs by the powers that be.
Are there any examples in the EPL this season where the referee has been invited to the monitor, but declined to change their decision (perhaps he originally saw it as 50/50).
I think there was one when Liverpool got a penalty v Palace and many actually thought the ref should have changed his mind !!
I think there have been a few but don't ask me when or where they were as I can't remember, but they have been few and far between.
I thought that one was on field ref made correct call, VAR imbecile thought it was a pen and sent for review and on field ref was too much of a coward to stick with his original correct decision?
Personally I think it’s time to change VAR from an AI to a real person. That way, we might be able to identify a specific referee making the same awful decisions as the on-field one rather than blaming a mythical set of three letters.
I guess we’ve no way of really knowing but it was certainly the case that Kamara totally stifled his threat.
Alright performance but Liverpool never really got out of first gear, if they really needed to they probably could've turned it up and smashed us by 4 or 5. A shame none of our lot could take their chances as per usual. Kamara is a top 6 player. Leeds is now a 937443 pointer.
I thought we were pretty poor throughout and were quite fortunate to come away losing only 2-0. Liverpool missed 3 or 4 free headers and played at three quarter pace throughout. Their goalie even wore tracksuit bottoms like it was a training game. We were never a serious danger to them. IF we had have scored one of those chances and if we had gone off script and presented even the slightest threat to the onward march of the luxuriantly bewhiskered multi-millionaire scouse mob and their legions of global TV viewers, they would surely have simply turned it up a notch or two and banged in another couple to make it safe. Perhaps the shocked and appalled officiating team might have chipped in with a handy WFC red card, or perhaps another penalty or two against us. After all, who in the game wants to see the title race over as a spectacle with so many games left to play? I don't believe this game told us anything new about this team apart from, as we already knew, they're nowhere near the quality of the players at the top end of the table. We'll find out more in the upcoming games about their determination, commitment and mettle. Of the players' performances, of course Kamara did very well indeed again. He has really good pace, persistence and tackling and sometimes his vision and passing is good also. Also I thought Kabasele did very well in the centre. I know he has made mistakes, but what defender hasn't. However I think he's sorely underrated. One of those that might leave and be a big success at another prem team.