Yet another VAR farce

[sinkov]

Alexis MacAllister's ludicrous red card against Bournemouth overturned. Never a red in a million years but VAR confirmed the sending off, of course it did. Is there anyone involved in officiating the game who isn't an incompetent halfwit ?

[army88]

Alexis MacAllister's ludicrous red card against Bournemouth overturned. Never a red in a million years but VAR confirmed the sending off, of course it did. Is there anyone involved in officiating the game who isn't an incompetent halfwit ?

Something is fundamentally wrong with the system Sinkov - the Var system was supposed to give us the comfort of decisions that were contentious or the ref needed confirmation of.

We are in situations where the operators are coming out and apologising for getting decisions wrong , the whole purpose of them being there in the first place.

VAR should only be used by the referee at his own discretion when he’s missed something or he’s not sure - it’s should also only be allowed to be seen at full speed - never frame by frame.

Whilst you can have a Blackburn fan on Var at a Burnley game or a City fan for Utd it will never get away from human passion / bias if you like .

Imo anyway let the ref referee the game and make the decisions - only use Var videos when he needs to.

[chastenor]

It is obvious to me that there is a bias in favour of certain clubs and a bias against certain clubs. Manchester United will get a penalty against Burnley that Burnley will not get against Man Utd, and Man U will get a penalty against Burnley that Burnley will not get against Man U (for example). This is an unconscious rather than a conscious bias But needs to be addressed. VAR is a great idea but every time I see a decision made by VAR I wonder if the referees are watching the same footage as me.

[kritichris]

It is obvious to me that there is a bias in favour of certain clubs and a bias against certain clubs. Manchester United will get a penalty against Burnley that Burnley will not get against Man Utd, and Man U will get a penalty against Burnley that Burnley will not get against Man U (for example). This is an unconscious rather than a conscious bias But needs to be addressed. VAR is a great idea but every time I see a decision made by VAR I wonder if the referees are watching the same footage as me.

That was the case before VAR but now VAR gives them even more options to screw the little guys.

[sinkov]

The red card niggled me right from the start, never mind VAR, it was two players going for the ball with their feet off the ground, and they basically caught each other, MacAllisters foot was marginally higher than Christie's so Christie came off worse, and fell to the deck screaming. In reality they were both guilty of the same offence, but the player whose foot was 25 ins off the ground got a red, the player whose foot was 24 ins off the ground got a free kick. VAR or no VAR, that's just not right.

[Swissclaret]

Back in the day, standing on the terraces at the Turf, I would join in with questioning the parentage of the match officials. It was part of the fun. As I recall, we didn’t have pundits reviewing every decision or non - decision. Decisions went for us and against us. That was football. How often one heard the grumble “we was robbed”. I don’t recall Kenneth Wolstenholme commenting on a ref’s decision in his commentary on a match. Refereeing was not a science. In today’s Times, there is an article suggesting that they have lost a “feel” for the game.

Like too much in life, there is a belief that science - read VAR - has an answer for everything.

Time and time again, we see that it does not.

Football is a game played by humans, refereed by humans and watched by humans with all their weaknesses, prejudices, passions and so on.

In my view, use technology for the objective only and get rid of all the pundits and analysts, get rid of VAR and bring back the “feel” for the game.