Liverpool v City - Klopp sending off

[RustyRef]

He missed two instances of consequential contact that led to the City goal and had to be rescued by VAR.

Klopps reaction was unacceptable, but him missing the easy foul there is an excellent example of how you can't just look at a foul and assume you can ignore it because it won't be consequential.

I don't even have to dig through clips for all the other moments - 2 of the 3 key events in the match come off him deciding he can just ignore a law because it doesn't feel consequential, before being almost immediately proven wrong. The only thing this is proof of is that trying to referee to secretly adjusted laws rather than the book causes you more problems than it solves.

No, still don't buy it. There is an argument that Gary Beswick missed a foul, although Salah also had hold of Silva at one point, but that isn't really relevant, it was a potential foul in a nothing area.

Even if it was deemed to be a mistake, which I accept, this seems to be the justification by a lot of people for the abuse, how is that so. If you put in a click & collect order at Argos, B&Q, Homebase, etc, and then turn up to collect it to find they've messed up and it isn't available, what is your reaction? After all that is a mistake, has inconvenienced you far more than a winger not getting a free kick in a football game, so are you justified to do what Klopp did and scream in the shop assistant's face? No, of course you aren't, as that isn't what society expects, yet for some reason it seems to be acceptable in football.

It doesn't matter what job you do, you will make mistakes in it. Whether that is order processing / stock control or refereeing, you will get it wrong from time to time and the consequences of doing so is you will annoy people. The difference is the reaction, scream in the face of a store assistant and as a minimum you are getting booted out and probably banned, possibly arrested, yet in football it is deemed acceptable?

 

[Ben448844]

You don't need a qualified and experienced referee if that is your only objective. Any random person with a whistle and a stopwatch can time 45 minutes twice - boom, game facilitated.

The reason there are less than 5 people in the country who would be trusted to officiate is because there are supposed to be very few people capable of making correct decisions in those circumstances. AT has shown that either he no longer belongs on that list, or he for some reason thinks the laws have changed and he should no longer give pulling fouls.

Obviously it'd not the only objective. Let's not be semantic. He's refereeing the biggest PL games and he's a FIFA referee. The fact he's a good referee in all facets is assumed.

Those that make the decisions clearly think he's capable of being on that list and so do I. He's almost up there with Oliver imo and he's got the balls to referee like he did on Sunday and I give him alot of credit for that.

 

[Anubis]

In days gone by we had simple criteria for assessing refereees

" Foul recognition, does he know what a foul is"


based sinply on the brief highlights I saw, that box would be a , no


If one of the worlds top refs, for thats who he is, cannot recognise foul plsy, then we are in a bad place

 

[GraemeS]

No, still don't buy it. There is an argument that Gary Beswick missed a foul, although Salah also had hold of Silva at one point, but that isn't really relevant, it was a potential foul in a nothing area.

Even if it was deemed to be a mistake, which I accept, this seems to be the justification by a lot of people for the abuse, how is that so. If you put in a click & collect order at Argos, B&Q, Homebase, etc, and then turn up to collect it to find they've messed up and it isn't available, what is your reaction? After all that is a mistake, has inconvenienced you far more than a winger not getting a free kick in a football game, so are you justified to do what Klopp did and scream in the shop assistant's face? No, of course you aren't, as that isn't what society expects, yet for some reason it seems to be acceptable in football.

It doesn't matter what job you do, you will make mistakes in it. Whether that is order processing / stock control or refereeing, you will get it wrong from time to time and the consequences of doing so is you will annoy people. The difference is the reaction, scream in the face of a store assistant and as a minimum you are getting booted out and probably banned, possibly arrested, yet in football it is deemed acceptable?

Where am I trying to justify it? Is it in the post you quote where I explicitly say "Klopps reaction was unacceptable", or somewhere else? I 100% agree with everything you've jumped up on your high horse to say - Klopp shouldn't have reacted like that. But none of that makes the initial decision correct, or makes it look like ignoring fouls like that is a good idea.

These are really basic principals of refereeing that he's ignoring here. See a foul, give it. Safe refereeing. He could have given the foul that clearly was, he could have missed that and still given a foul for the little post-contact flick out by Silva that's been going round social media, and it would have been forgotten and moved on from in 20 seconds.

Ignoring fouls is not just bad in terms of failing to referee to the LOTG and to what fans and players expect, it's also bad from a safe refereeing principal. Spicy game like that, everyone getting wound up. Smart refs would jump at a chance to give a clear foul and take 20 seconds out of the game late on. If we accept that referees have the ability to lower the temperature by slowing the game down then we must also accept the reverse - AT's actions here have raised the temperature. And we can't be surprised that choosing to make a tense game tenser might have consequences.

 

[GraemeS]

Obviously it'd not the only objective. Let's not be semantic. He's refereeing the biggest PL games and he's a FIFA referee. The fact he's a good referee in all facets is assumed.

Those that make the decisions clearly think he's capable of being on that list and so do I. He's almost up there with Oliver imo and he's got the balls to referee like he did on Sunday and I give him alot of credit for that.

It takes balls to ignore fouls? I find myself in the unusual situation of agreeing with Anubis - a strong, "ballsy" ref is one who makes the correct decisions, not one who floats around pretending not to see incidents.

I've long held this opinion of our supposed top 2 refs - MO is good because he is a strong ref and will make what he thinks is the correct decision regardless of stadium, team etc.

AT is considered good because he has presence and precisely because he uses that presence to avoid making tough decisions, so teams like him. I think the former is overrated and I have never understood why other referees like the latter aspect of his style.

 

[bloovee]

exactly ! The game needs to decide whether they want matches to flow (and let the odd thing go) or whether they want a stop / start game where every decision is analysed.

Well, we certainly don't want to revive the old headline:
The game was ruined by a referee who insisted on penalising every foul.

Seriously, how bad was it in the PL before they decided that "not every case of holding is a foul"?

 

[bloovee]

Have watched the 3 minute video showing every angle of the goal. None of which show the ball touching his arm, so not sure what VAR was supposed to do?

I actually asked whether VAR did look at it. There was no delay. And VAR does seem to miss plenty where the ball seems to change direction.

(Recall the fuss over Laporte's apparently getting away with a late handball v Everton last season.)

More generally, the "unnatural position" of Salah's arms here is because he appears to be trying to get his hand out of the way of the ball. But if in that position his arm did touch the ball (even accidentally) it's an offence - unless of course someone argues that the player ran a long way after the handling but scoring wasn't "immediately" (gosh, did VAR think that, so didn't look at it?)

If I really had the blue specs on I'd be showing again the TAA handball again from three seasons back...

 

[RustyRef]

Where am I trying to justify it? Is it in the post you quote where I explicitly say "Klopps reaction was unacceptable", or somewhere else? I 100% agree with everything you've jumped up on your high horse to say - Klopp shouldn't have reacted like that. But none of that makes the initial decision correct, or makes it look like ignoring fouls like that is a good idea.

These are really basic principals of refereeing that he's ignoring here. See a foul, give it. Safe refereeing. He could have given the foul that clearly was, he could have missed that and still given a foul for the little post-contact flick out by Silva that's been going round social media, and it would have been forgotten and moved on from in 20 seconds.

Ignoring fouls is not just bad in terms of failing to referee to the LOTG and to what fans and players expect, it's also bad from a safe refereeing principal. Spicy game like that, everyone getting wound up. Smart refs would jump at a chance to give a clear foul and take 20 seconds out of the game late on. If we accept that referees have the ability to lower the temperature by slowing the game down then we must also accept the reverse - AT's actions here have raised the temperature. And we can't be surprised that choosing to make a tense game tenser might have consequences.

Because when you say something is unacceptable, then follow it by but, you are seeking to justify the unacceptable behaviour. Its the same if you make any statement followed immediately by but, you are qualifying the statement you have just made. That is exactly what Klopp himself did, "I'm sorry, but" before he then went onto criticise the decision. If it was a game changing foul, or even a potentially game changing foul, I might see some way of understanding what Klopp did, but it wasn't, it was in a nothing part of the pitch.

And I keep coming back to the undeniable fact that the majority of people in football supported how Taylor refereed the game, pundits, journalists, etc, have come out and backed him. The only groups that seem to disagree with what he did are those associated with either club and referees.

It can't work both ways, if "the game" wants referees to keep the matches flowing there will be mistakes made as they have an additional judgement to make. It isn't just was there any contact, it is also did that contact have any significant impact on the opponent, and when you give anyone in any walk of life something extra to think about before making a snap decision they are more likely to make a mistake. I personally think football is vastly better as a spectacle since they gave this guidance to referees, and perhaps after a few seasons players will realise that throwing themselves over after any minor contact is fruitless.

 

[Peter Grove]

Unfortunately I did not see the game as I have been in hospital for four days for a major operation. Having just caught up with this thread, I am worried the anaesthetic has not worn off - I think I just read Bloovee accusing another poster of "biased cobblers". Silly, I know.

I think it's known in psychology as "projection."

 

[bloovee]

I think it's known in psychology as "projection."

The difference is I know I'm biased toward one team but that's no reason to let others just post scurillous nonsense, as in "Liverpool didn't put the ball out presumably in part because their analysts had told them that City do this (fake injuries)", an assertion "based on logically extrapolating from incomplete data". If you want to do psychoanalysis, analyse that defamatory nonsense. That poster and I do seem to agree that allowing pushes in the back and a rugby style hand-off to the face is not just a "high bar", it's ignoring fouls, and the justification that it makes for "incident" and "talking points" and is somehow "good for the game" is corrosive (and not just for your next park game).