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Competition Is It Match Fixing?

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Are Referee's Reffing Us Out of The Premier League?


  • Total voters
    151
Without wanting to sound like a Scouser, is there no popular petition out there to get VAR removed from Premier League football?

When Richarlison scored yesterday I didn't react at all, was just waiting for it to be disallowed for something I hadn't seen. It's ruined the passion of supporting the team, introduces a second level of subjective options, just leave it with the on field ref so only one ref is accountable for shit decisions, and if he performs poorly then he gets relegated, giving a pathway for decent refs to work at the top.
 
Balls to all that. Football is a simple game and I wish we'd stop coming up with new ways to complicate it.

Scrap the whole fucking thing and force refs to make decisions themselves again. I've had enough.
I get the frustration with VAR, but don’t talk like football before was some flawless golden age when refs were still making horrendous decisions every week, we just had fewer cameras and no social media clipping every mistake from 15 angles within seconds. Football’s a simple game in theory, but modern football is full of dark arts, diving, shirt pulling, tactical fouls and players conning refs at ridiculous speed. Acting like just let refs decide again suddenly stops blatant absurd decisions is fantasy stuff, because VAR only came in after years of everyone moaning about obvious howlers. The problem isn’t technology existing, it’s the cowardly implementation, refs hiding behind VAR instead of owning decisions, and VAR officials refusing to overrule mates unless it’s basically a crime scene. Scrap the forensic nonsense and keep it for genuinely clear and obvious errors, but if people think binning it entirely magically fixes officiating then I’ve got some magic beans to sell them.
 
don’t talk like football before was some flawless golden age when refs were still making horrendous decisions every week, we just had fewer cameras and no social media clipping every mistake from 15 angles within seconds.
Flawless it certainly wasn't, but was the sport of football in the 50 years prior to VAR a golden age? How could you say anything else, it was one of the most universally beloved entertainments in human history during that period!

You do make a good point though about the ability to dwell over high-definition replays in every format on every screen, in people's pockets following them into the bathroom has changed the information environment in a way that makes the old system harder to maintain.

But I also think leagues and broadcasters could manage that in a much more robust way if they (correctly) felt the obligation to.

The problem isn’t technology existing, it’s the cowardly implementation, refs hiding behind VAR instead of owning decisions
No. Wrong. The technology CREATES those incentives in a way that is inherent and immovable, it is the absolute laws of physics that video replay will swallow the game, it CANNOT be otherwise.
 
I get the frustration with VAR, but don’t talk like football before was some flawless golden age when refs were still making horrendous decisions every week, we just had fewer cameras and no social media clipping every mistake from 15 angles within seconds. Football’s a simple game in theory, but modern football is full of dark arts, diving, shirt pulling, tactical fouls and players conning refs at ridiculous speed. Acting like just let refs decide again suddenly stops blatant absurd decisions is fantasy stuff, because VAR only came in after years of everyone moaning about obvious howlers. The problem isn’t technology existing, it’s the cowardly implementation, refs hiding behind VAR instead of owning decisions, and VAR officials refusing to overrule mates unless it’s basically a crime scene. Scrap the forensic nonsense and keep it for genuinely clear and obvious errors, but if people think binning it entirely magically fixes officiating then I’ve got some magic beans to sell them.
Yup, it's not the tech, it's the corruption.
 
Fouls received, leading to yellow cards, we are not miles out at all

Before yesterday, we were 0.22 cards per foul given

Chelsea 0.21
brighton 0.20
sunderland 0.20
City 0.19
Bournemouth 0.19
Fulham 0.19

We arent even top of the 'fouls given per attempted tackle table'
We are top of yellow cards and second from bottom on around 4 fouls per yellow card compared to Woolwich at around 8.


And touches in box versus penalties awarded

 
Without wanting to sound like a Scouser, is there no popular petition out there to get VAR removed from Premier League football?

When Richarlison scored yesterday I didn't react at all, was just waiting for it to be disallowed for something I hadn't seen. It's ruined the passion of supporting the team, introduces a second level of subjective options, just leave it with the on field ref so only one ref is accountable for shit decisions, and if he performs poorly then he gets relegated, giving a pathway for decent refs to work at the top.
I didnt react either.

Referees rely more on VAR than their own ability now which is embarrassing.
Football has lost its way the last few years, whether thats related to our decline, who knows.
 
We were all celebrating when VAR correctly disallowed Sterlings goal in Champions League quarter final because the linesman failed to see it for offside. Imagine not having the Ajax experience.
Fair point, I went mental when that happened, think I may have ever teared up! However, it's crept into every part of the game and is now ruining it, I could accept a semi automated offside, goal line technology and then just leave the rest to the ref, force them to make decisions again
 
VAR is destined to fail, so many decisions in football are simply too subjective to call, no matter who they stick on the VAR panel. But we've gone too far and gotten too used to it now to suddenly go back to how things were. Fans will still expect every decision to be spot on, and we'll all suddenly remember how often the ref/linesmen used to get it wrong and outright miss things, except this time there'll be less hiding from it as every mistake will be analysed in minutia detail on social media. We've created a monster unfortunately.
 
We are top of yellow cards and second from bottom on around 4 fouls per yellow card compared to Woolwich at around 8.


And touches in box versus penalties awarded


We are top of yellow cards and second from bottom on around 4 fouls per yellow card compared to Woolwich at around 8.


And touches in box versus penalties awarded


The top table completely ignores how many tackles we make vs Woolwich.

Attempted tackles to foul to card data is very similar for every team -

The bottom table has pretty much zero context and whilst highlights one data point it doesnt do anything to explain anything it just shows a single stat

Ionman34 Ionman34 should be all over this stuff - seen that bottom chart pasted in here about 50 times and not a single pushback on the pitfalls of using this kind of out of context data to prove something.
 
The top table completely ignores how many tackles we make vs Woolwich.

Attempted tackles to foul to card data is very similar for every team -

The bottom table has pretty much zero context and whilst highlights one data point it doesnt do anything to explain anything it just shows a single stat

Ionman34 Ionman34 should be all over this stuff - seen that bottom chart pasted in here about 50 times and not a single pushback on the pitfalls of using this kind of out of context data to prove something.
No, you’ve added an additional layer to blur the lines and avoid my point. If tackles-to-fouls ratios are similar across teams then fair enough, but that is not the argument. The issue is the foul-to-yellow card ratio afterwards, where Spurs are clearly being punished far more harshly whilst Woolwich are getting a far more lenient threshold.

You only need to look at some of the reds we’ve received compared to what others have got away with in similar situations. The consistency is not there.

Same with penalties. Being 5th for touches in the box and having zero penalties could maybe be dismissed in isolation, but it is not in isolation. When you combine that with the yellow card stats and red card discrepancies, it starts to show a pattern rather than just random variance.

People keep shouting out of context about the chart, but context works both ways. You cannot dismiss every stat individually whilst ignoring the cumulative picture they create together.
 
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