Mike Riley is an utter knob. It’s frightening how the stupidity of just one person can have such a dramatic impact on the National sport.
I see VAR has drifted off into a parallel universe. Just saw Raheem Sterling get a whole boot full of studs to his shin in the game against Wolves. VAR reviewed it, and deemed it wasn't even a foul
More embarrassment for VAR. They have adopted this utterly ridiculous stance of waving away penalties because obvious fouls like shirt-pulling are deemed not to be "sustained". What the f**k does that mean? You either pull somebody's shirt or you don't. What does it matter how long that pull lasts? It's a foul. Forest v Villa on MOTD this morning: A Villa player practically had his arm pulled out of his socket by a Forest player, in a sustained pull that began three yards outside the Forest penalty area and ended three yards inside it. The Villa player lost his balance and the ball because of this blatant pulling of his arm. VAR looked at it and decided the arm pull was "fleeting" (which it wasn't) and DID NOT affect the Villa player (which it most certainly did) - so no penalty. Everyone could see that this decision was simply bollocks. The VAR judges must be registered blind.
Bournemouth v Wolves in the FA Cup. VAR has taken 8 minutes to chalk off a goal because a player's foot was offside. Eight minutes. That is a f**king disgrace. Players standing around for that long. It isn't safe. Someone will pick up an injury because they have been inactive for that length of time. Never mind ruining the entertainment of the sport. VAR is a total waste of money that has not improved football at all. It has just given power to a bunch of button-pushers in a control room somewhere. Absolute joke.
Merseyside Derby. Everton Captain commits the worst leg-breaker that you've ever seen that didn't actually break the man's leg. And VAR decides the referee's yellow card did not need to be reviewed. Absolutely beggars belief. The Liverpool player Mcallister is lucky that he's not in hospital tonight with his leg held together with nuts and bolts. Referees make mistakes. VAR is there to help them realise that. But all it is ever used for is to chalk off wonderful goals on nit-picking technicalities. You can assault a footballer and only by the Grace of God not end his career - and that's OK. But if your big toe is offside, you're out of luck.
The PGMOL has now accepted Tarkowski should have been sent off. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cr5dm1gny9ro I'm sorry, but that's no good enough. Whoever was calling the shots from the VAR control room yesterday evening is not fit to do that job. Not getting the ref to look again wasn't a 'mistake'. It was rank incompetence.
Just been watching MOTD. Evanilson scores a goal against Arsenal from close range, but it is unclear whether the ball goes in off the side of his body or his elbow. VAR checks it, and allows the goal. Apparently because none of the video angles shows whether it was off his elbow or not. I'm only going by what I saw on the TV, but the footage they showed was simply poor quality. You could barely see that the player was Evanilson, never mind which part of his body the ball bounced off. What is the point of VAR is the quality of the video footage is going to be inferior to that taken by a corner shop 1980's CCTV camera?
All VAR does is spoil football. £millions spent, just to correct a few refereeing errors. Players called offside by the tip of an elbow or a toe. Fans unable to celebrate most goals until minutes after they are scored. And still mistakes are made. What a waste of money. Just another example of football being taken away from real fans.
Now we have the ridiculous situation of an ex-referee on SSN saying the ref in the Villa match should not have blown his whistle when he saw what he thought was a foul on the Man Utd goalkeeper. The reason? The referee should have waited, so that VAR could intervene in a few moments time. So what are we saying now? That referees should not give any decision during live play? Yes, the ref got it wrong Shock horror. Hindsight of camera angles show that the keeper did not have control of the ball. But the referee could not see that. It looked to him as though the keeper had both hands on the ball. And so he made a decision in good faith and in real time. And now for that action, his competence is being called into question and his future career is being threatened. What is being proposed now it NOT video assisted refereeing. It is Video refereeing - with decisions deliberately being bottled by the man on the pitch so that the nerds in the control room can run the game. Just another piece of evidence that VAR is more trouble than it is worth, on all levels. Why even bother to give referees a whistle anymore. With constant surveillance of cameras everywhere, we seem to be descending into a society where honest mistakes are unforgivable. Where to get something wrong one time makes you unfit to perform a difficult and skilled job. Where it is better to cop out and do nothing.
