FA Cup third and fourth round replays to be scrapped after Jurgen Klopp's plea Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp and other Premier League managers have previously called for FA Cup replays to be scrapped - a move that would ease the demanding schedule FA Cup third and fourth round replays to be scrapped after Jurgen Klopp's plea - Mirror Online
I hardly think the filthy German scum (mail readers view) has that much of a say oflver the fa cup. yet another example of xenophobic mail writing and agenda filled attacks.
it was the whiplash part i was aiming at Though should point out lots of aerial challenges are deliberate fouls with leading with arm and just jumping into players to rough them up .
Well it wouldn't take much would it? yellow for Jones and a goal = easy win at the toilet. 1-0 v 1-2 would do it. on its own thst would/ could swing us to 20 points and superior gd than arsenal.
Of course - and that's why it's difficult for a ref to differentiate between what is reckless or intentional and something that's just an inherent risk. A clear and purposeful hair-pull has no such ambiguity, and deserves punishment - such things are not an intrinsic part of the game. I have a lot of sympathy for refs trying to control a group of players who are constantly trying to con them, and screaming abuse in their faces - but they have professional standards to live up to, and Dean's admission only serves to undermine trust in them to do their job to the best of their abilities. Anyway, I think I've said enough on this now and don't want to keep going round in circles. Cucurella is a knob though.
Not sure about these ifs and buts and all the xG bollocks tbh. How the games would have gone without the sendings-off is just speculation. I'm only interested in the clear and obvious stuff, not the subjective opinions on cards. Diaz's goal should have stood, but the lino got it wrong anyway, so VAR can only be blamed for not correcting it.
True, but the VAR argument seems to be like a seatbelt manufacturer saying that it's sad that their product completely, utterly, catastrophically failed - but hey, ho - you'd have died anyway had you not been wearing a seatbelt.
My contempt for the entire system has been well documented on here since it was first introduced. One of may main criticisms has always been that too many footballing decisions are subjective, and the game can't be distilled to simple black and white decision-making. Similarly, guessing what might have happened if something else hadn't happened is speculative, and hardly a solid basis for an argument.
Football might be subjective but there's an aid provided to get a "better subjective decision" We ought to be shutting up all the vested interests and mouths and just letting refs get on with it and review stuff on a screen if that's what's best to make the best subjective call by that ref on that day. if that means no slow mos allowed, etc so be it. we've the tehc to speed up the game not slow it down here. Theres no need to make a pigs ear out of anything. The little watch with a beep for a goal works just fine. the offisde is a shambles and the amount fo rule changes made with var in mind is making it far far worse. nobody wants 1-0 to the arsenal with hand in the air defending but we also don't need minutes going by while people try to figure out how to give an offside.
Hmm, true if we're talking about the Jones sending-off and the Kane non-sending-off in the same fixture a couple of seasons ago. Offside was sold to us as being objective though. That said, I still remember the Bobby armpit goal at Villa a few seasons back when Bein destroyed their shenanigans after VAR bent over backward to support the clearly wrong onfield decision, going so far as to rerun the moment the cross was made by at least two frames on from the one they originally put up, as that showed Bobby well behind Mings' knee. Then, for good measure, they drew the lines on skew-whiff as well. Even after all that, the line barely made Bobby's chest. Point is though, they're supposed to have learned from past errors, and I've still seen offsides given (or not) on-field whereby afterward VAR have fiddled the moment of the pass to support the on-field decision, one way or another. None of this was the point though - this wasn't an objective decision that turned subjective - it remained objective, but was miscommunicated. My contention though is that what made this farago exceptional was not the error - we all make mistakes, as Bisc seems determined to keep reminding us - but how that mistake happened. I just don't buy that a highly paid professional whose job it is to watch a screen and make decisions when called for didn't know which way the onfield decision had gone. Not for some nefarious purposes - if they'd wanted to fix the game they couldn't have done it in a worse way - but out of sheer incompetence. He was doing something else (or watching something else) and we're not being told. I don't think we should drop it.
Yeah - but I was talking about the article claiming we'd be top of the league if not for VAR and just pointing out that removing specific errors and then concluding how the game would turn out is a bit pointless. For instance, we can't say that it would have been a draw if Diaz's goal had stood because that change of circumstance prompts a change in attitude from both teams. The game could still have ended in any one of three ways. The effect of incorrect red cards is equally impossible to predict - all we know is that it ruins the game as a fair contest. As for xG, that's just porn for statisticians, in my view.
Very true, and I agree with you even though I posted it. But give it a few weeks and we get a decision go our way (tomorrow in a derby would be a pleasant change, for instance) and they'll all be back, including some prominent pundits, with their "VARpool" ****e.
When I were a lad... You went to a game and watched it. We aimed all the most colourful expletives we could muster at the ref, and disputed every decision he and the linesmen came up with if it didn't match our own. Then we went home and forgot about them. The fact is we never knew if offside decisions were correct or not because very few of us were in a position to even see. There were no lines in the grass - there was no grass half the time - and only the most egregious errors could be noticed. Even televised games only had one or two cameras and rarely had a decent angle. Then came more cameras and the trial by television that we all know and appear to love, arrived. Now all decisions were scrutinised and the fallibility of officials laid bare for all to see and lay into. And it's just got worse now where we're even trying to differentiate a gnat's nudger's worth of distance between players. And it doesn't really matter. A clear offside, that even a myopic linesman could spot, is really all that counts when it comes to gaining an advantage. The point I'm trying to make through all of this waffle is that decisions were probably always as bad as they are now, but we didn't know. In trying to make it perfect, and over-analysing it, we're only highlighting the inevitable fallibility of human beings, judging them harshly, and setting ourselves up for disappointment in the process. I make no excuse for the lack of professionalism from some officials, but poor on-field decisions have always been with us. We expect too much, because so much is at stake for us. Technology was meant to assist, but we're expecting too much from that as well - at least in its current form.
Agree with most of that but the officials are the ones using the technology we now judge them with, why are they still getting it wrong? (Not the marginal decisions)
Part of the problem, a large part of the problem, is that while the game has moved on considerably from what it once was, the officiating hasn't been able to keep up. Footballers were never (considered) athletes as they are today. The speed, skill, dexterity - call it what you will - has progressed considerably and yet we are seeing referees, some quite overweight, huffing and puffing to keep up as they did in the days when the players were having a halftime smoke and doing their best to keep up. Playing standards have risen in all aspects, refereeing has remained static with a lot of decisions being guesswork very often because the referee couldn't keep up with play. It's not all about physicality and fitness either. VAR is supposed to be what it says, an assistant but the officials using it can't even keep up with that. The technology in front of them seemingly baffling them regularly. I said the other day that there is no willingness on their behalf to improve and Bisc said that they were introducing new measures. I went and had a look and those new measures, three of them, are - a reiteration that accuracy comes before speed, a protocol for better communication and lastly, the VAR and AVAR have to agree a decision before it's communicated to the onfield officials. 'New' measures ( 2 actually not 3 as they stated because one of them is simply a reiteration) that most of us thought were a bare minimum that were already in use. I think we can all accept poor onfield decisions from time to time, it's actually part and parcel of the game we love. It's the unwillingness to move the officiating forward a notch to ensure the outcomes are as fair as possible.
Surprised you read it all tbh - even I'd had enough by the end. I don't know, I just suspect they've always been as bad. I've never done it so I can't say how difficult it is. The Diaz one was atypical, and was unforgivable by any standard - most are just due to human limitations and the inadequacy of the tech in its current form. I can think of many incidents where I disagree with the decision, but I can't remember many where I think a clear factual error has occurred. Most arguments just seem to be about different perspectives. The use of slo-mo and stills is a bad policy imo, but that just brings me back to my previous point about over-analysis. As I've said before, the ref should just be given real-time replays from different angles to help him decide.
As you suggest, the standard of referring probably hasn't changed, we are just more aware. However, we did have years of football with lots of camera angles without VAR so we were able to judge. That's still the case now but with VAR. I think that is a great argument for how poor the current crop are. They have been given the technology (that we've used to judge them previously) to improve and, simply put, they haven't. That's a massive failure imo
I referred to this earlier. The judging started on telly when they had enough cameras to get an angle on offside and multiple replays on incidents. I don't know how old one has to be to remember the days before all of this but I certainly am. I realise this genie won't be going back in the bottle but I don't feel it has enhanced my enjoyment of the game at all. I disliked the post-mortem analyses from their inception, and I still rarely watch them. I mute MotD between games because I have little interest in their opinions - unless there's something really momentous that I want to examine further. Long before VAR, trial by television set the ball rolling to where we are today, where every decision is scrutinised to death so that ex-players can screw some more money out of their careers. And the greater the controversy they can stoke up the better: "Look at all these bad decisions that went against your team and get angry". I suppose some people must enjoy watching this but I don't. I can't say for certain that the current crop of officials are no worse than in the past, but I think it's a reasonable hypothesis. Despite some claims, I see no evidence to suggest that foreign officials are consistently better than ours. I fear that all of us wanting a better standard of reffing are in for a long wait.
Upcoming Premier League games live on Sky... October 21: Chelsea vs Arsenal, kick-off 5.30pm October 21: Sheff Utd vs Man Utd, kick-off 8pm October 22: Aston Villa vs West Ham, kick-off 4.30pm October 23: Tottenham vs Fulham, kick-off 8pm October 27: Wolves vs Newcastle, kick-off 5.30pm October 29: West Ham vs Everton, kick-off 1pm October 29: Man Utd vs Man City, kick-off 3.30pm November 4: Newcastle vs Arsenal, kick-off 5.30pm November 5: Nottm Forest vs Aston Villa, kick-off 2pm November 5: Luton vs Liverpool, kick-off 4.30pm November 6: Tottenham vs Chelsea, kick-off 8pm November 11: Bournemouth vs Newcastle, kick-off 5.30pm November 12: West Ham vs Nottm Forest, kick-off 2pm November 12: Chelsea vs Man City, kick-off 4.30pm November 25: Man City vs Liverpool, kick-off 12.30pm November 26: Tottenham vs Aston Villa, kick-off 2pm November 26: Everton vs Man Utd, kick-off 4.30pm November 27: Fulham vs Wolves, kick-off 8pm December 2: Nottingham Forest vs Everton, kick-off 5.30pm December 3: West Ham vs Crystal Palace, kick-off 2pm December 3: Man City vs Tottenham, kick-off 4.30pm