Match Day Thread Norwich City versus Tottenham

Yeah agree with this. The really frustrating thing is we just simply don’t seem to be able to find a way to play against our direct competitors for survival. It’s pretty bizarre that our only real thrashing was against Villa

 

I've signed the petition. VAR has turned out to be a huge disappointment.

 

Even more frustrating was to completely outplay them at Villa Park and still manage to lose.

 

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Edited, feck it

 

It's not VAR as such that's at fault Rick, it's the implementation of it by the EPL and the Referees Committee. I watch a lot of European football and in most cases you wouldn't know VAR is in operation. When it is called upon, it's only a question of the match ref trotting over to the pitch-side monitor to check one of his own decisions.

 

So, seeing how comparatively seamlessly it works abroad, and what a complete and utter shambolic farce it is here, why can't / don't FIFA or EUFA intervene and instruct our FA in the correct usage of a tool designed to help - not hinder, as at present, the game?
Chris Wilder said after their game yesterday that there were about 8 farcical scenarios involving the use / misuse of VAR over the weekend

 

I agree with that, and with Robbie

VAR itself is a good thing. It’s the ridiculous way we seem to be using it that is the problem.

 

I welcomed the introduction of VAR because I thought it would reverse bad decisions. Instead it seems to be making them. My other complaint is that so much game time is lost waiting for VAR decisions - it must have been about 10 of the 90 minutes in the Spurs game. I also agree with Lineker's comment that off side decisions should be based on the position of players' feet when the ball is kicked. Wolves had a goal disallowed because one of their player's hand was off-side when the rest of him was on-side. Ridiculous. If it could be changed to the European system I'd be in favour again.

 

Jamie Redknapp agrees too, RER.

Meanwhile, fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp called for a change to the offside rule, saying that officials cannot guarantee that such tight decisions are entirely accurate.

He said: "I think maybe next year, look to find a situation where you can only be offside with your feet, because when people are running you're naturally going to be leaning.

"It's not 100pc accurate. [The Pukki incident] feels so tight, so marginal, I would rather just see it with the feet and it would make a lot more sense.

"If you were to say to me that it's 100pc accurate, to the millimetre, I'd say that's fine, but they can't even guarantee that - it feels slightly false for me."

 

You would have thought with the UK's experience of using it so successfully in rugby things would be the other way round.

 

As I understand it, you can only be offside, if a part of the body you can score with is an offside position. As you can't under any circumstances score with your hand, unless you're a GK and score an OG, that was a wrong decisions. The offside rule was created to stop goal hanging, the way it is being interpreted by VAR now has nothing to do with why the rule was created.

I'm not a great fan of Graeme Souness but I think his view that the offside rule should be changed so that provide part of your body is on side, then you're onside has a lot of merit. If this was used then many of the perverse VAR decisions i.e. Pukki's & the Wolves goal would have been reversed. I think at least the use of VAR should be changed to rule out the use of the silly lines they draw. Let the decision by made on the use of the eye.

 

So it won't be 100% accurate for the position of the players' feet either, will it Jamie?

There are two issues here, one about which part of the body, the other about margins of error. IMO the best solution to the former is a rule to the effect that any part of the attacker's body goal-wards of any part of the last defender's body is offside. As regards the latter, any margin of error arising from the limitations of the technology can easily be allowed for in the software controlling the computerised on- and off-side lines.

 

So ex-City manager Hooton thinks the VAR decision was fair???

https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/spo...ottenham-hotspur-var-premier-league-1-6443947

Has he not seen how many points VAR has cost us?

https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/spo...kki-var-premier-league-table-points-1-6444178

We have lost 4 points because of VAR and would be 2 points from safety if it were not for VAR

 

Hughton is right, the decision was fair. It correctly applied the rule, and was a correct application of VAR as implemented this season by the EPL It would have been grossly unfair to Spurs, and other teams who have had goals ruled out in similar situations, if the decision had been otherwise.

 

As much as I detest VAR,it's here and we have to abide by it's decisions.
My biggest gripe is with the 3 officials in charge of the match.The game is much faster now and most of the officials are well off the pace.The linesman on the City stand site was really poor.Failed to flag Kane offside in the build up to their 1st goal,gave wrong decisions for throw ins against both teams,missed blatant hand ball on at least 2 incidents.Missed foul throw ins,ie feet over the line.
The ref was no better.He gave numerous wrong decisions against both teams,and again was off the pace.
Of course the officials are not helped by players of ALL teams who cheat consistantly throughout the game.Stealing 10 yards on every throw in and free kick,time wasting when infront,taking too long with goal kicks (Krul take note),claiming throw ins when they know it came off them last.
Perhaps the players have got the game they deserve,and we the supporters have to pay the price.
Going back to VAR,I believe the decision not to use pitch side monitors was taken by ref association who did not want to question or overturn a decision made by VAR as it would undermine a fellow referee,and they wanted to support each other,and not overule a colleague.
At least in Championship no VAR (yet)

Happy New Year to you all


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That's a silly article. We haven't "lost" any points through the intervention of VAR. We have correctly been prevented from wrongly being credited with goals that the rules of the game stipulate should be disallowed.

As for being 2 points from safety were it not for VAR, that is completely without basis. Who knows how the league table would look had VAR not been introduced this season. Furthermore, how many people honestly believe we would have beaten Spurs if Pukki's "goal" had stood? We concede 2 goals a game on average and, much like Arsenal, we give every team plenty of hope of scoring more than once against us.

We need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and focus on what we need to do to start winning matches -- I mean defending properly. We have conceded more goals than any other team; we have a worse goal difference than any other team; we have lost more games than any other team; and have gained fewer wins than any other team bar Watford. And for all those whose faith is pinned to our goal threat, there are only three teams who have scored FEWER goals than us, while one has scored the same number; which means that 15 out of 20 have scored more. So yes, we score goals, but nothing like the number required to prove our salvation. And by the way, all three teams who have scored fewer goals than us are above us in the table. It isn't rocket science working out why.

 

I think for me this is the biggest issue I have with VAR, a lack of transparency and no acceptance that there's a margin for error.

All measurements have a margin for error, there's no way VAR is accurate to atomic-levels of precision. But the implementation treats it as though it is. Depending on what you read, VAR cameras run at 50 fps or any number up to 300 fps (no clear answer I can see). I've seen calculations based on the 50 fps figure which suggest a player can move 15 cm between frames, so even at 300 fps that's 2.5 cm. Given how tight some of the calls are where VAR has intervened, that's not an insignificant error! And that's just one source of error - there's no transparency as to how accurately VAR traces a point above the ground onto the horizontal plane they're using for offside decisions, for example. It also regularly appears that a VAR technician is manually placing those lines over a frame of footage and adjusting their position - how accurate are they?

I believe the UK VAR system is run by Hawkeye. The "VAR" system used in cricket is very up front about the margin of error. On an LBW call, they won't overrule the on-field umpire if they show less than 50% of the ball hitting the stumps. That's their margin of error. And that's in a situation where you really only need to track the position of the ball in a 3x3x2 m cube, and have the cameras set up specifically to do so.

If for example the error is 5 cm, then the lines should be drawn to have that thickness, and if the lines touch/overlap, the on-field call stands. Currently we see an image where the lines appear to be basically on top of one another, yet a decision is given. We get told that the VAR team have a non-broadcasted version of the image where the lines are impossibly thin to allow them to make these decisions more easily - once again failing to tolerate for any error in the system, and by hiding this image it's creating issues for them regardless.