Match Day Thread Manchester United v Southampton (BT Sport 1 ) - 8 pm 02/02

I can't believe Martial is diving at 7-0 or whatever it was at that point. Shows how ingrained it is in some player's game - it's just another instinct.

 

I have not gotten over Villa, last night was awful, but we were always going to struggle. The second red was shameful bias against us.

 

The game has been taken over by incompetent referees who see themselves as more important than the beautiful game itself. I don’t think any Saints fan, given the situation we were in before last night’s game, and especially after the first red card, would have minded a 4-1 or 5-1 thrashing. The difference between that and the 9-0 was almost entirely down to VAR and the ridiculous way the laws have been twisted because of VAR.

 

Simply brilliant, well done!

 

What is so upsetting is that cricket had already shown how to do it right. The umpires call element of cricket had taken out the frustration of so many decisions and proven that only obvious errors matter. In football this must go for all decisions, including offside, and must be that it is clear on ordinary speed- to the human eye - that the ref or lino initially got it wrong for an overturn.

Why does it need to be 100 percent accurate when the rules were never designed with this kind of accuracy in mind? It beggars belief - especially when a system shown to be inaccurate is being used to disallow goals by the millimetre.

 

Anyone else think it would be nice if our actual owners came out and said something about their commitment to the club? Even if they do want to sell, would be nice to know their intentions from them rather than a spokesperson of the club.

 

Like others, before the weekend I very much thought with a bit of time and adjustments var could work and make football better and would look to cricket, rugby etc to show how technology can work in sport. The last 2 matches have completely changed my opinion.

1) The system will not work while the ego of most referees makes them think they are bigger than the game. The big difference is in cricket or rugby the referee or umpire is not so arrogant as to think that they always get every decision right 100 percent of the time. They understand the technology is there to aid them get a higher percentage of decisions right - it is not there to show them up for making a poor decision. Until football refs can put their ego aside and accept that actually occasionally they might get a decision wrong and that is no shame on them (they are only human) then var will not work because the var ref will always lean to backing the the on field ref because they know that a week later it might be the other way round.

2) The technology is not accurate enough to determine offside to the nearest millimetre. Frame rates, lines down to interpretation mean that some sort of clear and obvious must also be applied to offside. Suggestions of saying there should be daylight between an attacker beyond a defender only pushes the issue on by a body width. I would favour giving advantage to the attacker or just sticking with the on field decision where it is not clear and obvious (admittedly this would not have helped against Villa) but even this is down to interpretation of the VAR assistants.

All fans wanted was technology to put a stop to the blatantly awful decisions where a player is miles offside or where the ref has completely missed a dangerous tackle or a player punching the ball into the back of the net.

 

Do other countries use VAR and do it better than here? If so why so, or it generally hated everywhere? It seemed to work in the World Cup

 

Whats the latest on us selling?

 

Don’t remember seeing lines drawn in the World Cup

 

Says a lot that I was genuinely expecting to be reading this today...

 

Shocking but sadly unsurprising.

 

It was awful that the world cup as far as I can remember. Don't watch any domestic footy abroad.

 

Really thought our fans were above this sort of vile abuse

 

Do we know they're Saints fans, or just mindless social media trolls.

 

From fans of any club the point is surely that the VAR implementation, rather than clearing things up is actually making things more confusing. What armchair fan watching last night's games would have had any idea about the interpretation of that rule for the Bednarek and Luiz red card?
Not long ago offside was simple and everyone understood it, the professional foul was a simple rule and handball was a simple rule.
Now all three rules are overcomplicated. There were 3 contentious decisions in the Man Utd game last night, and VAR and Mike Dean are the main talking point, not the 9-0. Which shows VAR and referees like Mike Dean & Co are just not suited to a game such as football and never will be.

 

I still don’t understand why Bednarek was red carded.
Maybe someone could interpret the rule for me because I thought a straight forward accidental foul, even when through on goal in the penalty area was a yellow and a red outside the box.

 

The actual wording is "genuine attempt for the ball" is a yellow card, anything else a red card.

 

From what I saw on twitter last night, it didn't appear to be Saints fans. The racist abuse was from 2 accounts both generic football "lad" types. Neither profile pic had saints related stuff and their accounts suggested following la liga clubs. He was given some stick by saints fans but no racial stuff

 

Go back to the daylight rule.