Therein is the problem Kenny my old flying winger. Players and probably managers are cheats. I just see a game two hours long in the future. What better way to stop a team in full flow than appealing? 1-0 up away from home and con the ref for the last 20 minutes. The game degenrates into a series of stop starts.
Goal line technology is workable. Sensors in the ball would be fine until a sensor broke mid game. For me the best thing would be to have a camera focused purely on the goal line and have an official watch this for the entire game. The official can then let the ref know instantly if the ball crossed the line. The main reason appeals won't come into the game in the same way they have in rugby, tennis, cricket etc is because football is a more free flowing game. Cricket stops after every ball, tennis stops after every point, rugby is a very stop/start game. This wouldn't be viable in football. Take our game with Spurs, we should've had a penalty and King should've been sent off. It took 60 seconds from that incident to Defoe scoring. What happens if we have an official watching a replay of the incident and gets in the ref's ear and he says he's just seen the replay and it should be a pen and a red just as Defoe scores? Does the ref cross off the goal and pull the game back? Does he allow the goal to stand but give the pen and red as well? As Redruth says, all you'd end up with is the Ferguson's and Wenger's of this world sending the game into farce by appealing every single tackle. The best way to cut out all the errors from refs is maybe have a league system for them as well. At the end of the season the two ref's who have had the worst performance throughout the season get relegated and the best two from the league below get promoted. Perfomance could be based on number of yellows/reds, overturned cards, number of controversial moments. Obviously current managers wouldn't have say in this as you'd end up with some managers deliberately downgrading refs who have made calls against them, but maybe set up a panel of ex-players and managers. Of course this would never work either. What we have to accept is there are no more or no less errors by officials now than there were 20, 40 or even 60 years ago, its just now we have more and more video replays from all corners of the ground to over analyse every single incident, so little mistakes are suddenly noticed and big mistakes are picked up on even more.
Given the position of all the players is tracked its possible to implement a system which says if a player is offside could be interesting.
It seems to me that refs seem to go downhill when they are promoted to the premier league. Go back a few years, Does anyone remember Uriah Rennie? In the lower leagues he was hailed as a brilliant up an coming referee. When he was finally given top league games, his displays seemed to go downhill. With all the camera angles and so much at stake for clubs nowadays, could it be a simple case of extra pressure for the referees, and they can't handle it? If a player is having a confidence problem, he can be 'hidden' in the reserves to try and rebuild his confidence. Where can a referee go? I'm not defending what can be seen as incompetence at times, but trying to think of it from a ref's point of view. If a ref makes a mistake it is highlighted and picked to pieces, and blamed for the team's defeat. If a striker misses 4 or 5 chances, is he blamed for the team's defeat? Also, the game has got a lot faster as well. You get a young speedy player who runs one half of the pitch against a much older man running the 3/4 of the pitch. Hope this drivel makes sense. It did in my head at the time.......... I think
NO ! Don't want it, too many changes have been made to the 'beautiful game' already. Football has almost become a non-contact sport already, besides WTF would we debate on here and in the pubs if everything was black and white ? All we need is harsh retrospective penalties for diving, cheating etc. i.e. 6 game ban for a dive, one match ban for an unseen shirt pull in the penalty area. That would put a stop to that overnight. As far as goal-line technology is concerned, every team has probably benefitted and been the victims over the years. I don't hold with the arguement that 'there's so much money involved today', tough, football needs to retain it's 'sport' status, the business side comes second
I tend to agree with Kickitoff on this, the rule changes are a complete farce, no doubt forced onto the game by Sky, but, I really hate the cheating that goes on. Why wasn't Jelavic cautioned for collapsing to the ground holding his face after Bennett accidently walked into him, it was disgraceful and surely the only thought in his mind was to get Bennett sent off. That is totally wrong, and the referee didn't take any action because he'd already lost control of the game by then. Why can't the referee's be substituted, is a question I would like to see addressed, if they're obviously having a stinker, which Andre Mariner was, then surely the fourth official should have a say and get him off. What is the purpose of the fourth official anyway, the managers go and talk to him about decisions but nothing ever gets done! Andy Carroll, Ashley Young and all the rest of the obvious divers should be banned retrospectively, why not, it's applied to other offences. ILD OTBC
i'd not be against an appeal system, through the captain or the manager. maybe one appeal per half per team where a video ref (or 4th official) gets an allocated amount of time to view the incident, say 1 minute or 90 seconds, so as not to hold the game up any longer than an injury or substitution would. if no decision is made by that time the original decision stands. i don't really understand what the problem with this would be? if you challenge a decision and it isn't frivolous you get your challenge back. if a team does it towards the end and its clearly to break the game up, how is this any different from a late tactical substitution? if you've used your challenge up and then the ref makes a clanger well tough - you've obviously used your challenge up making a frivolous challenge!
Superman touches on another bug bear of mine. Why can't football copy rugby in having an independent time keeper? All the ref needs say is time off and time on as he stops/starts play. Stop the Ferguson minutes at Old Trafford
