Unconscious bias, we are all subject to it I’m sure they try to minimise it, but you can’t avoid it completely If Liverpool are 1-0 down and Mane looks like he’s made a meal of a couple of challenges then the next time he hits the ground there’s bound to be doubt in the refs mind Sometimes people suggest refs favour certain teams consciously, that is, cheat, that’s clearly untrue, but the best teams are usually the best con artists too
It would be interesting to know if the lack of crowds has had any impact on decisions being made, with referees not being screamed at by thousands of partisan home fans.
I think the referring has been generally better, leading to less unfortunate Tom altercations Sadly, VAR is a shambles, shows that 'automating' decisions isn't a golden ticket There's still humans making the rules, saying how they should be interpreted, interpreting them and being subjective The easiest law to interpret with VAR is surely offside and yet its the most controversial in some ways due to the disagreement over whether a toe, a heel, a shoulder, an arm, a knee are offside. We've created a monster because using tech 1mm is offside and if we progress with the tech, 0.1mm may become so The 'perfect' Lino would only give offside if he could see it therefore, what maybe 5mm? Therefore we have changed the way the law is implemented in favour of the defence and that surely isn't what we want to do