I would be shocked if you and I didn't want the same outcome, in terms of football the game. We disagree on the way to get there and the direction of travel. Like Ange said I am just an older fan shouting into the wind because I think we are in grave danger of losing football as the spectacle it's been for a very long time. The game has always changed from it's beginnings when it was just two villages fighting one another without rules. People died and villages were trashed. 6 Kings of England banned the game but the people carried on regardless. Then in 1863 the FA began and the rules were formalised. I'm sure you know all this, so forgive me for repeating the history but it is important for the context of my argument. I am pretty sure that in recent years since SKY there has been more meddling with the rules than ever before. We have reached the stage where every season there is a discussion by the powers on how the rules should be enforced and interpreted. This is a nightmare for referees and they get the stick when things go wrong. Now we have reached the stage where pro footballers often do not know the rules they are playing under. Is it hand ball is it not hand ball. Defenders having to put their hands behind their back. Is it a red card is it not a red card. It used to be simple, was the player playing dangerously or not. If these changes were working we would have less penalties, less red cards, and less cheating. We have the opposite which suggests to me that all the messing about with the rule book is counter productive. Despite what the pundits say I do not think our last game with Chelsea was a great game I think it was a travesty of football. Where the referee and VAR becomes more important than the game. Where the interruptions to play were so frequent that you wonder if four of our player ending up with injuries was a direct consequence of standing around getting cold. I applaud our manager for what he said about VAR and referees, he is spot on IMO.
VAR actually forces the onfield officials to give the benefit of the doubt to the forward as the decision can be properly checked later.
Benefit of the doubt and no check later. Although as I have said Offside is an area where you can make sure even if it is against the spirit of the game.
It wasn’t a great game because 20 minutes was spent watching the players stand around waiting for VAR to make decisions. This is not the kind of drama you want in football. But it is increasingly becoming the focal point of the game and the main talking points afterwards. And it often takes the momentum out of the game. We rarely see teams get up a head of steam chasing a goal, forcing a succession of corners etc. VAR intervenes and by the time the game restarts after 5 minutes, the team under pressure had had to time to rest and regroup and the impetus is lost. Other sports are finding that the increased use of technology is spoiling the spectacle too. It’s becoming tedious in cricket and rugby.
I can't find definitive data....where did you find red cards and penalties going up? I think the issue with IFAB is that they fiddle with the rules rather than addressing the major problems with them. And the biggest problem of all is the principle behind them which should be to discourage cheating rather than punishing it. As an example... shirt pulling can't be done accidentally so is always a deliberate foul. It could be completely eliminated by making the punishment very harsh. The same for delaying the taking of free kicks and penalties. And for fouls to prevent breaks. What isn't needed is harsh punishment for mistimed tackles where there is a genuine attempt to play the ball and no danger to the opponent.
Hard cases make bad laws. It's unusual for a game to have 10 goals with five disallowed on close decisions and three more also close, as well as an obvious penalty and four possible red card offences of which three were completely missed on the field. That's thirteen VAR interventions which surely must be a record.
Red Cards and Penalties are simply common place when they were rare before. You don't need to find stats. it's obvious. I agree about shirt pulling. We saw what happened (Again the Chelsea game) when Oliver let the game 'flow'. The intensity rose and the red cards happened. We could all tell you that any game between Spurs & Chelsea will be heated. The ref needs to cool it not add petrol to the flames. As far as I am concerned Oliver created the conditions that caused the red cards. I am not removing the blame from the two players but I am also not going to complain because they are full of passion and trying to win. The ref is there to stop fights, that's why we needed them in the first place.
It was reminiscent of the so-called Battle of the Bridge. Clattenburg deliberately didn't do his job, by his own admission. Oliver takes a similar attitude to virtually every game. We started both well, took the lead and were coasting. They clogged away, didn't get pulled for anything and then came chaos. Then the post-match analysis is about Spurs losing it.
The Clattenburg debacle started because very early on in the game, nasty Chelsky tackles were going in and then unpunished. As I have stated this season, I have noted that in the first 15-20 mins of Spurs games, the opposition are committing a lot of fouls before Spurs even commit one. This is : - good, in that it indicates that the opposition defence is struggling to deal with the Spurs attack - bad, in that it signals to the perps that there is much more they can get away with, and to the aggrieved that the ref is against you (which leads players with lesser calm to attempt to "even the score" ) . I have long advocated the "team fouls" concept in basketball, where when the collective total hits a point, each subsequent foul is immediately punished. In football the equivalent could be every Nth foul by a team, no matter who commits it nor how minor, results in a yellow card.
My namesake, Graham Poll, referred to it as "machine gunning" in a dark arts article in 2011. It was for the Daily Fail, because he's a massive twat. They're well aware of what's happening, they just don't want to deal with it.
Eddie Howe has indicated Newcastle will do everything in their power to resist a proposed new Premier League rule that would prevent teams from signing players on loan from associated clubs: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...mier-league-rule-to-block-transfers-says-howe They're not owned by the same people, though. Honest.
Then managers should be talking in public, I recall there was a period a while back when somebody shamed the refs over Cirehs' breakaway-preventing MF fouls spread among the team (and therefore nobody was getting carded) . Not long after, Citeh did it early on in a game and the ref gave a yellow card (much to the anger of the false messiah ) . The beauty of my proposal is you would have statistical precision on fairness (the foul profile of any game in the season for a club in Mth place vs a club in Nth place would be known) .
As it stands, with City losing 2-1, 2 points separate the top 5 with almost a third of the season gone
Currently 4-3 to city... very entertaining game...Chelsea looking decent and unlucky to be losing...3 mins plus added left
