Premier League - 2023/24

Yes I agree, but an excellent performance like that which achieves no points and a feeling of being cheated/card stacked against you, can actually do more harm than good. Play that well and still get no reward. A late equaliser and a hard-fought point and they would be feeling on cloud 9 and confident going into their next game.

 

Also from that United v Wolves match. Varane went into the crowd to celebrate his goal but didn't get booked. As far as I'm aware that's a mandatory yellow card offence? So more blatant cheating by the match official. Ignoring the rules to suit his mood. I really can't stand the level of bias that sits in the Premier League. It's an utter disgrace.

 

The funny thing is, if you speak to Man Utd fans (and other big teams) they'll also agree that VAR is **** and that they're victims of dodgy officials.

Perhaps it's just football fan bias, perhaps Man Utd are really my first team? (After Arsenal of course) Glory Glory Man Utd!

 

I'm not sure they will sack him. Edwards proved himself in the Championship and Luton are just taking a sabbatical for a year, earning a load of money, before re-entering the Championship next season. They need a guy they trust to get them back up again, and he's done it once on a limited budget. With a bit more money they should be placed to be a playoff contender once more with him in charge. As much as we all dislike Luton, I'd swap their owner with ours in a heartbeat.

 

Love the fact that people still throw their hands up in disgust at VAR. Like the system brought in because the referees were so bad at their job being run by the same referees was ever going to work out any differently than it has.

Please keep paying your Sky/TNT Sports subscriptions to watch the same 5 teams week in and week out. Meaning they get more money than the others, then be angry that they are owned by billionaires because of the above. Then moan that no one can compete with the same teams and that it’s boring that the same teams win everything and get all the decisions in their favour.

It’s the bestest and most dramatic leeg in the world.

 

Thing is, that argument was made by plenty of people before VAR was brought in, but it was dismissed because, well, technology makes everything better, apparently. The clamour for VAR was an extraordinary thing.

 

TBF VAR works well for offside checks. Where it fails is where there is any element of subjectivity such as penalty decisions. The same spineless referees bottle making the same decisions against the same big clubs as they did before VAR. You would think that VAR would embarrass them into making consistent fair decisions but it doesn't. The flak for giving a 90th minute pen against a big side is still greater than the flak from the rest of the football supporting public ridiculing their decisions.

 

About 15 years ago I managed a betting platform the restaurants and executive boxes at OT for BetFred. My presence was required at OT for the initial phase so I went up there for about 12 or so matches. I was only required to be around pre-match and post match, so during the match I was given a seat in the stand near where the TV cameras were. I'd never been there for a Watford match but what was most striking was how quiet the place is with 70k fans there until someone in red falls over or the referee dared to make a decision in the away teams' favour.

 

And it should work, but it doesn’t. Every sport has some version of VAR and I can’t think of one which has the hassle of the Premier League version. It, for the most part, works abroad. It works in major tournaments without too much fuss. So why not here?

You could spend forever on the reasons. But really it’s as simple as ‘it’s English football’. Financially doped, endlessly analysed and corrupt to the eyeballs. Whether the refs are doing things consciously or subconsciously I’ll leave to the theorists. Years of idiot pundits farting out nonsense like ‘it all evens itself out’ whilst Man Utd get their 20th penalty of the season at Old Trafford or they miss a Man City player being 5 yards offside has lessened the impact of bad decisions down to a chuckle or two on ‘ref watch’ on Sky Sports News on a Monday whilst the richest teams keep winning and the other teams keep whining.

Lee Mason - one of the worst referees you’ll ever see, was given a job by PGMOL this season to train other referees. What hope is there for them?

But one thing you can pretty much guarantee, if there was a Superleague tomorrow, you’d get maybe one refereeing unit from England and a complete overhaul of VAR with specialist rule nerds, not referees running it.

 

It was never going to work because even pre-VAR there was a huge amount of hot air wasted with pundits debating and disagreeing over penalty and other key decisions. As you say, offside is a matter of either it's on or it's off.

VAR has contributed to slowing the game down and reducing playing time and the solution to that is now to add on more time at the end of each half, further worsening the spectacle.

Unfortunately, the game got so big financially that people lost sight of what it is – a fast-moving, imperfect game of mistakes (made by both the players and officials). As soon as a pundit uttered the phrase: "With tens of millions on the line, the officials have to get these decisions right" we were doomed. It's the sort of beguiling, easy 'common sense' answer that wins arguments. Even sensible people thought: "Yeah, these decisions *should* be correct." But there was never any provision in the laws of the game for every decision being correct. In fact, there was an acceptance that the referee's word was final and we were all grown-up enough to accept that and get on with the game.

VAR has robbed football of so, so much and we've barely noticed. Instead, we've just moved the debate on to the next stage – which will be to overhaul who is in the VAR room reviewing the decisions. It's not VAR, it's the WRONG PEOPLE looking at the screen. And that's a problem that can never, ever be solved.

But you're right, the impression we're left with is that VAR favours the big sides even more than the on-field officials. But maybe that's just the inevitable consequence of having a sport that is now a business.

 

There’s no reason at all why the top few clubs should get disproportionately more of the TV or prize money than the rest, if the authorities were prepared to run the game in a fair and equitable manner to benefit all.

 

Only took one game for L*ton fans to be under investigation for racism, homophobia and "public order offences".

Disgusting club

 

Honestly GD, (and I say this in jest), is there anything you enjoy about football anymore?

 

100% the latter. Had it been 0-0 and a possible penalty for MU, without doubt it would have been flagged up and given by the ref and confirmed by VAR. The sad thing is everyone knows and accepts this.

 

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the non big-6 clubs (including us) capitulated to the big boys so they could keep a higher proportion of international TV monies - because the little ones were scared of them running off to a superleague which they then tried to do anyway?

Football clubs have been gleefully handing the power to the big clubs for a while now, just so they can have an ever shrinking piece of the pie. Poisoning their own well.

 

Sure, when the results of the implementation of the system have made no difference to the overall correct decision making process then I will agree wholeheartedly that it wasn’t worth it.

But again, in other sports, other leagues and other competitions, it works. It doesn’t work here because of ‘insert reason here’.

Maybe they don’t want it to work. Who knows? But they certainly haven’t tried to make it work. Just apologise and move on. Who cares if bad decisions get little clubs relegated? Not the PL, we’ve got Vincent Kompany back in the league!

 

Obscene spending. I hope they fail again this season and the owner starts to think about what else he could have done with all the money he's tossed away since buying the club.

 

I don't think they have an Irishman do they?!

 

If the football authorities were in full control of the game the smaller clubs wouldn’t have been put in that position. It’s those authorities who have been scared of the big clubs running off to a ‘Super’ League.

 

The big clubs are going to suck the life out of the smaller club. Chelsea hiding in plain sight as regards breaching FFP rules. If Olise goes, then CP will go after a "lesser club" to wrench their star player and so on and so on.

Something very strange going on at Chelsea. The money they are spending is not justified from a business point of view. The question has to be asked about who might be backing the owner behind the scenes, who may not be concerned about losing billions. I do not think Todd Boehly is a man who throws money away.

 

Much of the spending by the biggest clubs isn’t justified financially. It’s all about vain owners throwing around money to satisfy their egos, paying whatever it takes to get the beat.

 

That is the way it is going, but many of the current owners of the super clubs, still want to make gains and positive financial returns. It’s the oil states that are throwing the abhorrent amount of money about. I just have a sense that there is an illicit source of money involved in the present Chelsea farce.

In the near future, all the super clubs will be owned by unaccountable corrupt States. The process is well under way. What will happen after that is anyone’s guess. FIFA and UEFA are not going to close the door on the middle eastern funds buying up the marquee clubs. The footballing authorities welcomed them into their club many years ago.

 

I heard on the radio yesterday that last season the referees were sent to the monitor 120 times and only stuck with the original decision on four occasions.

I know they want to preserve the status of the onfield ref but it's pretty clear that the VAR is effectively the decision maker now so they should bin off the theatre of jogging over there, standing awkwardly at the side of the pitch watching TV and just let the VAR notify them that they need to change a decision.


Ok, four times out of 120, the onfield ref might get annoyed they've been overruled but the rest of the time, it would hugely speed up getting the same decision.

 

But this is the issue with var . Goals are being chalked off forensically because someone's heel is offside, a goal that , pre var, everyone would accept was a good goal . And these disallowed goals are used as evidence that the system works. To my certain knowledge pre var if it was suggested that a player is offside if that player is millimetres offside and a goal will be disallowed then everyone would be a Luddite and quite rightly so. I thought VAR was introduced to stop the injustice of the Thierry Henry goal against Ireland and not to penalise a striker because he is level but leaning towards the goal and the defender leaning the other way . How wrong was I ?

 

Your either offside or you’re not. If you’re 1cm off you’re off, if you’re 1cm onside, you’re onside. Before it was just down to pot luck, or rather, which team is it and who are the crowd supporting !!. It’s the one area where the bigger clubs can’t be treated favourably. The only issue is the delay it introduces.

 

Which is not worth the bother of ruling on those extremely close offsides.

 

But how do you define extremely close? And once you define extremely close, you’ll have offsides/and onsides that are within mm of that arbitrary measure of what is too close, and they’ll be called ridiculous for being given/not given because they were only mm from the area defined as too small to worry about.

While VAR exists offside is the one thing that should always be 100% correct with no ambiguity at all, as soon as you start building in margins of error you just shift the problem either side of the margin for error.

 

Well you have to check the offside. You see it’s 1cm offside So you say we’ll let that go. Next one is 1.5cm. Let it go? 2 cm ? Call it offside? But it’s only 0.5cm more than 1.5cm ? Let it go ?
If you check for offside, the goal is either offside or onside. The minute you allow a margin of error you’ve simply moved the line and it will still be just one side of that new line.
If it’s offside it’s offside whether it’s 1cm or 10cm.

 

Snap !

 

At the World Cup, they used semi-automated offside. Quick and easy use, no stupid lines over the screen. Worked a treat. A cursory look around the internet didn’t bring up any issues with the technology.

Other countries decided to implement it, Serie A immediately after the World Cup. Not England.

There’s money in drama. And it’s live.

 

Sounds good. Let the software check it quickly and take the humans out of the equation.
They need to do the same in cricket. None of this “when you’re ready, I’ll have the ball-tracking please Steve ….when you’re ready Steve….I’m ready for the ball-tracking Steve”. Just write a programme, press a button and let the software just resolve.

 

The 3rd umpire is there to simply check if there’s any bat on ball in LBW decisions. Even then, they pointlessly show the front on view for no apparent reason. Never heard an umpire say ‘that’s 3 reds but you know what, I reckon that’s missing leg’.