VAR Madness

[Andy_Faber]

Taken from a Facebook post relating to last night?s Rangers match, which I watched a bit due to family fandom. In summary, the opposition were denied a scored goal due to an offence by Rangers. Bonkers.

Sorry but this technology is doing our absolute heads in and killing the game! Hear us out..

Tonight, we watched the Rangers v Bilbao game and anyone on here who watched it will know exactly where we are coming from.

This is no bias towards Rangers this is pure frustration with stop start robotic nonsense, refs incapable of making a decision and VAR slowing everything down with fans having no clue what is going on.

In the 2nd half, Bilbao score.. here are the turn of events

■ Ball over the top and Bilbao eventually score
■ VAR
■ Checking handball in the build up (Bilbao) cleared
■ Checking offside in the build up (Bilbao) we think it was offside but still not confirmed
■ Goal expected to be disallowed as looks offside
■ Referee now sent over to the monitor to check for a hand ball in the build up (Rangers)
■ Ball over the top Sterling (Rangers) Berenguer (Bilbao) in the air, as the ball comes down, both players off the ground and the ball brushes Sterlings fingertips, then on to Berenguer's hand, completely unintentional from both.
■ Referee takes an age to look, look and look again.
■ Meanwhile, if you are in the stadium, you have no clue what is going on
■ Referee signals for a penalty to the bemusement of all the players and fans (Bilbao included)
■ VAR state it was a deliberate handball
■ Now we don't claim to be brains of Britain but how can a ball over your head when your in mid air and not looking at the ball and it brushing your hand be deliberate.
■ Penalty given

All in all this took around 5 minutes to play out.

This post isn't about Rangers specifically but to add to this, justice was done and the penalty was saved and the game finished 0-0 which is a fantastic result for Rangers.

But from a VAR point of view, tonight we saw multiple stoppages for VAR, fans left in the dark and a baffling decision.

Is it a one off, no it isn't, we see it week in week out in most leagues and cup competitions.

Modern day football is getting extremely tedious and something needs to change!

[MadAmster]

With my ref's hat on....

Not seen the incident so I can only go on what's written above.

Disallowing the goal. Correct decision. The Laws state that if there is contact between hand/arm and ball of one of the attacking team, even if it's accidental, in the lead up to a goal, the goal should be disallowed. In this case, there was contact so VAR got it right.

The penalty decision. If the Rangers players arm was deemed to be in an unnatural position, then VAR got it right again. If it was in a natural position then VAR got it wrong. Based on what is written above.

[SithHappens]

I don't like Var, it does sound like maybe the right decision was arrived at. But it was supposed to be about clear and obvious errors, if it took 5 mins it's not.

[MadAmster]

I don't like Var, it does sound like maybe the right decision was arrived at. But it was supposed to be about clear and obvious errors, if it took 5 mins it's not.

A point I've made on many an occasion both here and elsewhere. I stand by my opinion that, if it takes more than 30 seconds to decide the ref made a clear and obvious error, then he didn't make one.

Quite likely there's some new Law changes coming in that will confuse things further.

Offside. Players will have to be entirely past the last defender in order to be given offside. Won't change the millimetre decisions, just move it a couple of feet further forward.

The current 6 second rule for keepers that gets totally ignored by both keepers and refs may be changing to 8 seconds starting from the moment the keeper has the ball under control. That will lead to a flurry of free kicks and cards for a month and then die a death.

[SithHappens]

A point I've made on many an occasion both here and elsewhere. I stand by my opinion that, if it takes more than 30 seconds to decide the ref made a clear and obvious error, then he didn't make one.

Quite likely there's some new Law changes coming in that will confuse things further.

Offside. Players will have to be entirely past the last defender in order to be given offside. Won't change the millimetre decisions, just move it a couple of feet further forward.

The current 6 second rule for keepers that gets totally ignored by both keepers and refs may be changing to 8 seconds starting from the moment the keeper has the ball under control. That will lead to a flurry of free kicks and cards for a month and then die a death.

It will lead to players standing in front of the keeper even more to try and force a free kick. In my memory of rule changes the only one I can think of that's improved the game is the back pass rule.

[Andy_Faber]

With my ref's hat on....

Not seen the incident so I can only go on what's written above.

Disallowing the goal. Correct decision. The Laws state that if there is contact between hand/arm and ball of one of the attacking team, even if it's accidental, in the lead up to a goal, the goal should be disallowed. In this case, there was contact so VAR got it right.

Then I retract my opinion about VAR being an ass, its the laws of the game in general that are an ass. That just doesn't make logical sense - forget the 'accidental' bit for now, if someone deliberately handles the ball its the same order of magnitude (using common sense) as committing a trip foul, so 'play on' should be allowed in the same way. I'm glad I'm not a ref, I couldn't officiate with an inconsistency like that on the books