But Blue ! Soon be something else for refs to deal with and “get wrong” Cue endless debates about what is a “blue card “ and what isn’t. Particularly when it comes to fouls https://twitter.com/TeleFootball/status/1755613470127800789
I predict there will be loads of blue cards as refs will use it as a safe haven and then VAR will find it harder to over rule difference red to blue. Will certainly be chaos while the boundaries are established,
It's going to be trialled in the piddly leagues amd youth competitions first. No VAR to worry about. Almost certainly won't see it trialled in England either.
Will the team be down to 10 men for this period? If not, will be a pointless exercise as it will just be taking one for the team. It will all be down to the refs perception and human error will always happen. When a team benefits from the blue card there will be uproar as always. Goal line technology has helped the game without changing the game but even this is not perfect with some angles not covered. VAR has not helped the game, but has changed the game. Stop trying to change the game, football isn’t broken. Instead employ competent refereeing staff and maybe employ ex-footballers who like fans can spot a foul a mile away
Be honest . How many of us on this forum whinged whined and complained when Doucoure threw the ball in the back of Southampton's net a few years back ?. Not many I'd wager . Most football fans are happy to take the smooth but wail like banshees when it goes against them . The game isn't broken , refs make mistakes, players cheat and fans are biased. Was it ever thus?
I'd add that fans also need to accept the occasional wrong decision as part of the ups and downs of the game. Swings and roundabouts, rather than busting a blood vessel over whether a big toe was offside or not. I think blue cards are a terrible idea. A yellow card for a cautionable offence and a red for a serious offence or two yellows. No need for anything in-between.
As I understand it, the point of the blue card and sin bin will cover just two areas, one is dissent which according to data from amateur leagues has made a marked improvement on player behaviour, I don't think dissent is a massive issue in the professional game as much as it used to be so it wouldn't be much of a change. The second would be one of those taking-one-for-the-team cynical fouls on the halfway line when a defending team suddenly break away and a defender chops down the breaking away attacker such that it is too far from goal for a red.
The sin bin system (just not with a blue card) has been in operation at grassroots level up to Step 5 in English football since 2019-20. I've watched a number of games where it's been used for dissent, players not retreating at free-kicks, kicking the ball away etc – usually to punish repeat offenders rather than sending someone straight to the sin bin for kicking the ball away. I would say that it has definitely made the referee's life easier. Players don't surround the ref, they don't get involved in the petty sh*thousery that disrupts and slows down games at the higher level. Over the past couple of years, I've found Step 5 football to be far, far more watchable live than the Premier League – and even the Championship. There's just a lot more willingness to get on with the game, less time spent trying to con the officials. Whether that can be attributed to the threat of the sin bin I don't know. I do know, though, that players aren't all that happy about the idea of sitting out 10 minutes and then coming back on because it increases the risk of injury. A few times I've seen a sinbinned player just go through the warm-up routine the way a sub would while they're on the sidelines – although I gather they're not supposed to do this, they're supposed to sit on the bench. Having said all that, I just feel immediately weary about it being introduced at the higher levels – mainly because it will add another tedious layer of phone-in and pundit debate and make the game even less about the actual football and therefore even less watchable. "Was that a blue card?" "Should Declan Rice have been sin-binned for that?" "For me, that's a yellow, not a blue," says Danny Murphy (picking a pundit entirely at random) because he hasn't read the rules and doesn't know the different type of offences. In the cases of dissent there will be angry calls for the refs to be mic'ed up so we can hear whether a player actually called the ref a useless see you next Tuesday. It's already tiresome and they only announced it yesterday. Hopefully the people who are saying someone's jumped the gun and there are no plans to introduce it at the top levels are right.
My local team are step 4 and their gates have more than quadrupled since Covid. When fans were allowed back at that level but not at EFL games, they benefitted from fans of Watford, L*ton, McDons and a few others who were desperate to get out and watch a game. Many of them had never been before and had always written off non league football as rubbish but found it a much more enjoyable experience. When the gates opened again at their professional clubs, a lot didn't bother going back. Leighton Town used to get gates of 80/90, and now regularly get 400 or above. Good entertainment, good beer in the clubhouse and a feeling of your £10 on the gate being genuinely appreciated.
If they want to go down this roue, just do the simple thing and make all yellow cards 10 minutes in the sin bin. Including GK time wasting and anyone who runs to argue with a referee. It would clear 90% of shirt pulling, tactical fouls and cynical tackles straight away. It would only take one or two times for a team to concede while they are down to 10 for them to change. Look how many less times a trainer now comes on, knowing they have to go off for a full 30 seconds before coming back on. If teams are concerned to being down to 10 men for 30 seconds, imagine what they would be like about 10 minutes, or worse if they have 2 players on the sidelines for 10 minutes each.
I identify with this a lot. Leighton Town definitely benefited also from getting Lee Bircham in as manager and winning the title with a very good attacking team. Leon Lobjoit, Ben Spaul, Archie McClelland, the Connolly brothers were all excellent at Step 5. Nice little ground Bell Close – Nice stepped terrace at one end, decent stand to sit in, good bar. So many clubs like that have benefited from the general faff of League football. Want to pop along and watch Wycombe or Stevenage on the off-chance? Not easy. Want to pop along and watch Hitchin, Chesham, Dunstable etc, no problem. An incredible story at St Albans City who, ten years ago, struggled to get 600. Now regularly get 1,600 and had 3,500 for the derby against Hemel at Christmas and 2,500 for the visit of Yeovil. My local team, Harpenden Town, have put in a 3G pitch and crowds have gone from 30-40 before lockdown to 180-200 now and still rising. And your comment about the quality rings true, even at Step 5. The skill level is decent, the matches tend to be more open. There's far less tedious, tactical caution. It's often two sides just really trying to win the game. And your point about the money is true too. Yes, there's some jaw-dropping stories about how much some players at Step 4 and 5 get (Lobjoit didn't do too bad!) but, in general, the money is paying to keep the ground tidy, repaint the changing rooms, in some cases support a junior set-up or a women's team etc.
Yes they were fun to watch last season. My wife always commented last season that I came back form Leighton Town games with a smile, and came back from Watford games miserable. Interesting you mention the faff with tickets as you are right if you want to go to a game in the Prem or EFL it is a faff. You don't get that with non league or abroad it seems. I went to Werder Bremen a fortnight ago and buying the tickets was a breeze - almost like they want to make the ticket buying process easy rather than making it unnecessarily hard.
Easier still just apply the existing laws of the game. Keeper time wasting should be a yellow card. Currently it is several warnings, a few taps of the watch and then in injury time a reluctant booking. Time waste and you get booked. Time waste again and you get a second yellow. It is really simple.
I do genuinely think the upper echelons of the English game have lost the plot in a lot of ways. I know there are more security considerations at play the higher you go, but the Watford ticket app is frustrating. Adding a single ticket for a one-off game didn't work for me last season and I've not bothered this. Non-league clubs manage to send out a ticket in an email and it works fine. There's a bar code to scan etc. It's actually been easier for me to go to away games than home games, and I've tumbled down the categories. It shouldn't be that way when you know for a fact there will be thousands of empty seats at some home games. There are now barriers to attending games that simply didn't exist before. If a game is sold-out, fair enough, of course, but making people jump through hoops to buy one of 5,000 empty seats is absolutely barmy. It's also far, far too expensive, although that's an issue lower down the pyramid too. Step 2 football for £16 or £18 is a lot. The prospect of paying THIRTY FIVE quid to sit in the Rookery and watch Leicester pump us at home tomorrow? Game's gone mad, Jeff. This has wandered off the original topic, sorry. In summary, English football gets much, much less watchable for me the higher you go up the pyramid these days.
Wow Red for sent off and yellow for cautions. Blue for cynical fouls? Isn't that a yellow card? Sin bin... so football is turning into Rugby now? What's next, allowed to handle the ball outside of the goalkeeping position? The FA are considering a few more cards in the future.
Ridiculous idea! Why not concentrate on improving the standard of refereeing rather than inventing new cards
Isn’t there a problem when these offences occur in the last couple of minutes? Time wasting regularly occurs during this period. There have been several instances this season where we have moaned that players doing this have not been yellow carded soon enough, so effectively get away with it. The same would happen with a sin bin - the team that is really offended against gets little benefit on the day, so there’s no real disincentive to continue doing it.
Time wasting is just one of the offenses though. I hate the tactical fouls just as much as time wasting, where they block someone on a through run, around the half way line. If a team already has one player in the sin bin, in the last 10 minutes, will this hurry keepers and others up up? the risk of going down to 9 and in the odd case having used all their subs, might speed a few keepers up. They would have to have some sort of stop start clock system, so teams don't take 2 minutes over substitutions and fained injuries to count down a sin bin time. The down side, can you imagine how many more games we would have lost with Holebas in the side !
When I was at the Bremen game a few weeks ago I took my wife and told her how great the atmosphere would be. The game started and it was as silent as a Watford game, no noise at all which is odd for a German game. After 12 minutes the game stopped as hundreds of fans chucked gold chocolate coins on the pitch. Luckily enough the bloke next to me spoke good English and explained what was happening. German fans across the country had united and agreed to no singing and no flag waving in the first 12 minutes of every Bundesliga game. This was in protest at their governing body who are trying to sell TV rights (hence the gold coins) and start buggering up kick off times to appease tv audiences. The protest was designed to say 'We are the 12th man, sell your souls like you are looking to do and you don't get this atmosphere'. The guy explained that the general feeling amongst fans was "Look at what has happened to the English Premier League, we don't want to become like them where they are soulless tourist TV shows and far removed from how football should be". I see people in England often referring to the Bundesliga, and other leagues, as farmers leagues despite in most cases having never been to a game in those leagues. Those 'farmers leagues' are actually far more enjoyable in most cases and they sit there laughing at the English for the arrogance of thinking our football league is so wonderful.
Give it a few weeks and people will be complaining why did x get a blue card but someone else didn’t for the same sort of offence. Much like they do now !
Most of the reasoning for not having it seems to be what would players do in the side lines. Well how do they cope in rugby and hockey? Sure they just aren't sitting there getting cold... TBH i just think people are fed up of constant changes and having delays in the game. And how would keepers be dealt with?
Same as they are at the minute surely? Keeper gets a sin bin like anyone else and it's not the ref's problem to help them out. I'd wager a keeper stupid enough to be binned twice would probably be dropped by the manager
Would another keeper come on? Surely teams won't like playing with an outfield guy in goal potentially affecting the game. BTW Someone needs to tell Talksport and other media outlets that football certainly isn't the same as even 10-20 years as they keep going on about tradition and messing with the history of it. I can think of many things that have changed it for the better or worse.
I guess the team could substitute a second keeper on but then they'd have two on if the ten minutes didn't reach the end of the match. Ultimately it's there as a deterrent/punishment so if someone wants to risk it that's on them.
I still can't see why the first yellow isn't 10min in the sin-bin and do away with the blue card. And I do hope that the 10min doesn't start until their arse is on the chair in the sin bin (as in hockey and rugby).
More needless meddling that will.lead to the rule being exploited and abused with more negative tactics and football. If the current rules ate used correctly or something like marching teams back for dissent this stupid idea is not needed. Idiots with roo much time on their hands trying to justify their existence. Most of the current officials cannot use rhe current rules anyway or apply VAR correctly and accurately so God help us they'll only make a balls up.of this. What is dissent. What ate the levels. Pleading, swearing, mockery ?
They tried the 10 yard rule and it didn’t last long which says it all . Nor would this . As if a ref is going to send 4/5 players to the sin bin each game .
Just me then that thinks sin bins for dissent are a good idea? I still lug myself round a pitch every Sunday morning and we’ve had them in place for a few seasons now. Whenever we’ve come across a referee willing to use them, it works a treat. I don’t see how a Sunday league player gobbing off to the referee is any different to a top level player.
Cue, more debate by ***** pundits, was it a blue? was it a 2nd yellow, should 2 blues make a yellow ? The team with a player sin binned will just bore the pants off everyone until player back on.
