The Ref Stop

West Ham v Brighton

The Ref Stop
A major weakness of PGMOL officials had always been SFP. They’re naff at identifying it.

It’s almost as though they’re doing their best to keep it 11v11. Which is very noble. But ultimately, you need to deal with it when someone oversteps the boundary
 
His shinpad is what's saved his leg from breaking. You can see it taking the brunt of the force then being displaced.

Anything other than this was a clear red and we got it wrong would be a cop out.
 
I'll bet it's the touch on the ball first that has (wrongly) deterred VAR from intervening. It's nice that despite that touch we can see universal condemnation of the challenge and lack of appropriate sanction.
 
That is really poor, he clearly raises his foot and seems to be following a recent trend of going too far the other way this season on the leniency scale, especially considering that tackles like Curtis Jones last year were nowhere near as bad as this and some recent possible leg-breakers.
 
I think RJ missed it because his view was impeded but VAR? Surely seeing the shinpad move would have prompted VAR to review, lucky that wasnt bone!

Ticked all the excessive force boxes, speed, distance, intensity, out of control.....
 
Must be very hard to referee a game when the clear mandate is not to ruin the spectacle
Although it's seemingly very obvious PGMOL work to this remit, they do however dismiss players for extraordinarily soft reasons on other occasions, like Shar-Gate (Newc v Southampton first game of the season). It just feeds into my (and most people's) narrative that they're collectively not good enough

There is however a very compelling counter-argument to my own argument, that is it's not the referees who are the problem, it's the organisations above them which are responsible. PGMOL and IFAB. I've always felt this is the root of the problem.
IFAB in particular (and FIFA if we really want to get to the very roots)
 
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I can see why it was missed on-pitch, Rob Jones was the wrong side of it and I don't think it would have looked as obvious from that angle. But there is absolutely zero excuse for VAR to miss it. I don't see how any referee can watch that on replays from multiple angles and say it wasn't SFP.

I've said this before, but Webb is almost certainly going to find himself at a point where he has to start formal disciplinary action against some of his officials. He would be perfectly justified in phoning the VAR officials to ask them what exactly they were doing at the time, incidents like this are calling his leadership ability into question.
 
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