You'll be pleased to know he did absolutely nothing in either game against us. In fact, the only time I noticed him tonight was when he complained to the referee in the 65th minute when Juanlu got booked for taking out Martinelli. Otherwise, I didn't realise he was on the field. Sevilla were awful tonight, though. 0 shots all game and offered no attacking threat whatsoever. In fairness, they rested quite a few players for their derby against Real Betis this weekend, but I'm surprised they'd be taking that game more seriously over this one considering their precarious position in the group.
What odds on him scoring 42 league + 16 CL goals this season (doing Lewandowski on both fronts) ?? Granted that means he will have to start in the remaining Munich "dead rubber" CL games.
Liverpool have a late equaliser chalked off in the Europa League. I don't think that anyone was expecting them Toulouse...
I didn't make it up. It's in this article which is based only on early results admittedly. https://www.skysports.com/football/...tatistics-behind-worldwide-use-show-positives It also showed that time lost to VAR delays is negligible compared to other stoppages.
This study only used a handful of games in the PL so carries little weight in English conditions. It's also carried out by the IFAB who have instituted VAR and therefore have a vested interest in presenting the case for it. These figures I find completely unbelievable Free-kicks - 8m 51s Throw-ins - 7m 2s Goal-kicks - 5m 46s Corners - 3m 57s Subs - 2m 57s compared to the average time lost to VAR 55 seconds!!!!! My response to that is bullshit. I can only surmise that they are adding the total time taken in a game and compared that to one incident of VAR.
It is well known that the amount of time the ball is out of play in a match is very large and those numbers look very plausible to me.
What is not plausible is comparing 55 seconds for VAR against 7 minutes for throw ins. I assume the 7 minutes refers to all the throw ins during the game and 55 seconds refers to one incident of VAR. As I said that's politician speak.
If you have to make your case by using dubious figures in an even more dubious way then it suggests that your case is not very strong.
I didn't even post the figures...you did and the only claims I have ever made are that VAR corrects 80% of serious mistakes, the longest VAR delays are similar to long injury delays and overall time lost to VAR is small compared to other delays. These are all certainly correct.
PS come on! I responded to YOUR talk of 80% the figures I have posted was from the link YOU posted. I would not make this argument on any % figures at all. My argument against VAR is from my observation of what it does to the game of football. Figures AS YOU HAVE SHOWN, can be twisted to suit any argument. Here is my argument: For over 100 years football managed with referees making decisions. We fans ALWAYS find an issue with decisions against OUR team, that's what we do. We are biased. Despite that football became the most successful game in the world BEFORE big media got involved, before SKY bought the game. Then started the pundits criticising the refs decisions, just like fans have always done, but they did it not in a pub with an audience of 1 or 2 but on television with an audience of millions. They found this made great TV so they enhanced it with slo mo pictures. They encouraged more dissent from fans and fuelled their bias even further. They change football, players realise they can cheat and the refs get the blame, BIG money encourages this even more. Footballers are no longer earning 20 quid a week like the rest of us were. Now we are talking millions. The game is corrupted, extremely rich people from all over the world see the millions and their eyes light up. They buy clubs then Countries buy clubs and the spectre of Man City arises and the media swoons over them. Russian gangsters buy clubs and another monster is created. Now the media monster is hungry for more and more, lets add VAR and we have even more. The media has described our game with Chelsea as one of the greatest, REALLY! There in that response is why we as football fans should hate VAR and all that it represents. That's my argument.
Looking at those stats, it is clear that in general there is "confirmation bias" by the audience, Decision accuracy has improved, but at what efficacy costs you could not say (without the "source data" for the games selected)
I posted the link in response to your incorrect claim that I had made up the 80% correction figure. The figures about delays were taken by you from the same link and never quoted by me. For most of the history of football we've had to put up with 10% of big calls being wrong because that was the only option. That will have meant that inferior performing clubs won leagues and cups because of those decisions. We now have technology that can rule out most of those errors. It means that it's more likely that cheating won't prosper which is also a good thing. My argument doesn't depend on the exact statistics at all.
My claim, and it's there for all to see, is that the figure you used is dubious, I stand by that. I accept that you didn't make up the figures; IFAB did.
The problem isn’t so much with VAR per se it’s that the laws of the game are too complicated and convoluted, and the application of the technology is wrong.
The laws of the game have been changed and changed again and each time we get further from the spirit of football and what made it so popular in the first place. For example Off Side: was never meant to be judged to the millimetre. It was created to stop players taking advantage by moving behind a defence. There used to be a simple arrangement to give the benefit of any doubt to the forward, simply because most people want to see attacking football and goals. We now have the emphasis almost on preventing goals. Football is not snooker or cricket it is a contact sport where EVERY tackle is a potential foul you therefore need a referee to make 'common sense' decisions instead we are getting decisions as if football is an exact science.
I don’t have a problem in principle with using it for binary decisions. Goal line tech, and the semi-automated offside system should be easy wins for the use of tech. Such decisions can only be given one way or another. I do think your wider point is interesting though. Football has been a professional game for a long time but the massive influx of money since the 90s has led to even more money being spent perfecting coaching, sport science, everything behind the scenes. When clubs spend so much perfecting their ‘process’ they probably feel entitled to have the decisions on the pitch be as close to 100% correct too. There is no doubt tech helps make more correct decisions but at the cost of the ‘soul’ (for want of a better word) of the game? I do feel that slowing down replays, multiple angles etc., sometimes isn’t helpful. Like you say football is a contact sport. I do think that the fact the laws keep changing and interpretations differ between refs (has always been the case and other sports have always done a better job preparing for this) does help the air of general confusion and examining every contact, every collision in minor detail isn’t always a helpful or fun thing to see at a game.
It doesn't matter what the actual number is...it's quite clear that the number of incorrect decisions is high enough to affect the final order of a league table AND that VAR reduces errors dramatically. If I was on the IFAB my objective would be to write and enforce the rules in such a way that cheating is eliminated by making the consequences of cheating worse than the gains. A great example is the disallowed Sterling goal on Monday. He knew he had handled it but without VAR the goal would have stood because no onfield official saw it. What would happen in a proper sport is that he would have told the ref it had hit his hand and you wouldn't need VAR. I think I want the same outcome as you but think VAR is a tool to achieve it because it makes it more certain that cheats don't prosper.
