So half the comments on twitter want VAR binned because of the decisions at Chelsea and Newcastle and the other half are complaining about the Coutinho goal being disallowed because the flag went up for offside and the ref blew his whistle. VAR is a good thing. Incompetent officials are the problem. For offside however they ought to change the rule so that the only relevant part of the body is the foot, put transponders in each boot at the toe and heel and call offsides automatically.
I really like that idea for the way the game is played now It would be better if offside was used for it's original intent though which was stopping a player gaining "unfair advantage". A player is not seeking to gain unfair advantage by being faster of foot or reaction than his opponent, neither is a striker seeking unfair advantage at a free kick or corner when defenders run away from goal and leave them in space, that is just a cowardly way of defending invented by Big Sam for Bolton and abusing the offside rule.
I don't think that the new offside instructions are helping. Lots of pundits got a bee in their bonnet, so they changed the rules. Linos are now making decisions on the fly about things that they should let go to VAR.
They're making the wrong decisions at the wrong time. If someone's just miles offside, then call it. Don't make marginal shouts when you're not sure. The Coutinho call against City today was the perfect example.
Coutinho was quite a way off side when the linesman called it and received the ball coming back from that position. EDIT.......he actually flagged when the ball was received but the call was correct based on the starting position.
In that pic he is on side but the call was made because a second earlier he was well off side and ran back to receive the pass. Good call.
Look at your own pick mate, he's blindsided the defender by coming from behind him (in an offside position) to receive the ball.
For anyone that hasn't seen it, it's at the end of this clip: Just incredibly soft. Nowhere near enough to overturn the original decision, for me. Mendy milks it and the ref bottles it.
What's this? VAR call in favour of Chelsea? I tell you, in the history of the universe this has never happened before. Of course since we know it was a wrong decision, we can surely expect all those Chelsea fans who have been bleating since their game against us about bad VAR decisions to join in with us in condemning the ref and VAR. In fact I expect they will start a petition to ensure that the ref never appears at their games again. You know, because they have such a high moral compass about such things. Also, have we had more goals disallowed by VAR than most teams? I really don't know, sometimes it seems that way. I'm not talking about any one particular decision, just the overall feeling. And my overall feeling is that them claiming VAR is scientific is what I would technically call "bollocks". It's subjective and subjective means bias. I would be really interested in seeing stats on number of goals disallowed by VAR. I wonder if certain teams have fewer goals disallowed than others? Would be interesting to know.
Var will always be an issue because humans are involved. Even with the benefit of multiple camera angles, they can’t get basic things right.
