He has, linked up well with Lingard on the left, hopefully he can do the same with the bearded one on the right.
They will be four penalties in one match in Russia. Its going to be crazy. Is it me, or do the Italians keep asking the ref to review every time they are in the box?
Very soft pen I thought. Good defensive pressure and the player went down. We’re moving nearer and nearer to a zero contact sport, which is just absurd.
I've said for a while that var will speed up making it essentially non contact. It's going to ruin the world cup isn't it?
I have a nasty feeling you’re right. The zero contact thing has been helped by years and years of pundits like Shearer saying **** like “he’s entitled to go down there” which is just bollocks. In an ideal world players should try and stay on their feet and only go down if they can’t stay up. You shouldn’t need VAR then, not for fouls in the box anyway.
you know the BBC headline 'Saints apply to join Women's championship" .... is that if we lose to West Ham on Saturday?
There will be decisions given correctly by VAR....blatant things missed by the ref, but there will also be decisions made by VAR that are no better than those made by a live referee. In other words...opinions, opinions, opinions. And we slow up and disrupt the game for that. This particular decision (unimportant in the end as it was a friendly) was one that would be given by the ref one day and not another. Is VAR ready for the WC is the question? P.s. a draw was a fair result anyway as both teams had chances, so no argument about that.
So this is boring but: I think this is one of the most important points. If that wasn't given then no one would have talked about it. It's not written down anywhere that "accidental" fouls after the shot has gone are rarely given (particularly as penalties), it's just the convention. Just like the GK can hold the ball for 10 seconds, every dropped ball is uncontested, injury time is just a random number between 2-5 minutes etc. Don't like it? Good, because VAR will have no option but to give penalties like this. Maybe that's fine, but someone should probably say so because at the moment it's just happening by accident. PS I can't wait for a whole month of talking about ref decisions .