by fivecups » Sun Nov 29, 2020 7:39 pm
I was an advocate of VAR when it was introduced but it's not working and it's not even getting better. Chris Foy's statement that it was a penalty is rubbish. We need to go right back to basics here if it has any hope of being successful - for penalties and off-sides. What do we want from it? We want penalties to be given if a clear goal-scoring chance in the box is denied by a foul. And, we want off-sides to be given if the attacking player is unequivocally off-side giving him an unfair advantage. The current process for both of these is a mess. All this slow-motion, zoomed in footage is useless for making either of these decisions correctly, we show examples of both yesterday.
Off-sides should be clearly off-side, the tech is there to demonstrate this, we are just trying to be too clever at the minute. All we need to do is draw a relatively thick line (eg. representing 5cm diameter in full size) along the furthest back part of the defender that can play the ball. Then look at the line and see if the attacker is off-side. If you can't see the attacker beyond the line he's on-side. 1cm ahead of the defender shouldn't be off-side, it's too difficult for the officials (where do you drop the line from etc. etc.), give the attacking player the (5cm) benefit of the doubt. Quick and easy.
Penalties should only be given when a clear goal-scoring chance is denied by a foul. This means zoomed out and watched at full speed before zoomed in slow-mo. And it really should be a clear and obvious mistake, otherwise the decision isn't over-turned. Yesterday the striker wasn't in control of the ball and was nowhere near scoring, Robinsons contact made f*ck all difference to his chances of scoring a goal and yet we lost 2 points because they got a penalty. Ludicrous. That's not football, that's not the point of the penalty system. That's not proportionate. Amazing the PL refs have forgotten this. A penalty should only be given when a goal-scoring chance is illegally stopped. All strikers are trying to win penalties now, it's more profitable than trying to cross or score in many areas of the box - that is not football.
As it is I'd happily scrap VAR and revert back to live action, celebrations and the rest. It's total ***** and I'm sick of it.