Mike and his Micro Technologists, weren’t they a band in the 90’s...
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PL clubs to debate whether to drop VAR for rest of season
- Thread starter Peter Grove
- Start date
RefIADad
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The "micro-lines" are what really drive people nuts when you look at the overall VAR debate. Waiting 3-4 minutes (if we are lucky) in the PL while VAR is trying to draw those lines is madness. We're both Americans, so we've been used to the general aspect of "indisputable evidence" in the National Football League. MLS generally uses that as well. I wish the PL would adopt that for offside and get rid of the lines.
I think if people were looking at this purely from a neutral perspective (I know some teams' fans think they get the short end of the stick from VAR), they would say overturn the obvious calls. If I can boil what we want to see reversed into a single play, the missed offside call in the Liverpool-West Ham game from February 2019 is the call we want to be able to overturn. It's a clear error, and it would take 30 seconds (if that) to review and overturn.
Watch: Referee misses offside call in Liverpool draw with West Ham - UPI.com
A linesman missed an offside call, leading to Liverpool's only score in a 1-1 draw against West Ham United in the Premier League.
www.upi.com
When decisions like this and others have cost teams points that ultimately could cost a certain team a £25 million champions league spot!!!
Peter Grove
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What I don't quite understand is why, when it comes to offside (unless I've missed something) the VAR officials seem to be constrained to only two outcomes - either distinguishably offside or distinguishably onside. Whatever happened to, "level and therefore onside"?
OK, this would probably be a minority of calls but as far as I can tell, it just never happens (again, unless I've missed it). It could also be somewhat a question of the overall philosophy, I suppose. If the officials are being told in effect, to "force" a decision to be absolutely, definitively one way or the other, that's what they'll do. We've actually seen this happen. There have been cases where the two lines as we see them originally drawn, are right on top of each other. Then the VAR adjusts the lines until they're clearly distinguishable.
If they were told that if it's too close to call easily, then an acceptable decision would be for it to be considered functionally level, maybe we would see more tight ones called that way.
OK, this would probably be a minority of calls but as far as I can tell, it just never happens (again, unless I've missed it). It could also be somewhat a question of the overall philosophy, I suppose. If the officials are being told in effect, to "force" a decision to be absolutely, definitively one way or the other, that's what they'll do. We've actually seen this happen. There have been cases where the two lines as we see them originally drawn, are right on top of each other. Then the VAR adjusts the lines until they're clearly distinguishable.
If they were told that if it's too close to call easily, then an acceptable decision would be for it to be considered functionally level, maybe we would see more tight ones called that way.
one
RefChat Addict
Or inconclusive evidence to determine either of the three.
The problem we have in the PL is that regardless of what VAR does, Sky/BT will still always go back and draw those microscopic lines on the field after the match.The "micro-lines" are what really drive people nuts when you look at the overall VAR debate. Waiting 3-4 minutes (if we are lucky) in the PL while VAR is trying to draw those lines is madness. We're both Americans, so we've been used to the general aspect of "indisputable evidence" in the National Football League. MLS generally uses that as well. I wish the PL would adopt that for offside and get rid of the lines.
I think if people were looking at this purely from a neutral perspective (I know some teams' fans think they get the short end of the stick from VAR), they would say overturn the obvious calls. If I can boil what we want to see reversed into a single play, the missed offside call in the Liverpool-West Ham game from February 2019 is the call we want to be able to overturn. It's a clear error, and it would take 30 seconds (if that) to review and overturn.
Watch: Referee misses offside call in Liverpool draw with West Ham - UPI.com
A linesman missed an offside call, leading to Liverpool's only score in a 1-1 draw against West Ham United in the Premier League.
A 3 or 4 minute delay to end up giving a technically correct answer is irritating, but hard to actually dispute. Allowing a goal that Sky/BT then go back and "prove" should have been disallowed has caused teams to be relegated or miss out on titles in the past - without VAR you can just blame human error, but if you have a system in place and choose not to use it, that starts to become negligent.
The other problem is that showing a picture without lines at all can lead to issues with the camera angle being misleading. You can see in the picture @Sheffields Finest posted above that without any lines (ie. mentally drawing a vertical line across the picture), we'd all probably say the Sheffield United player is a yard onside. But because the line slants across the picture, we can all agree at the very least that it becomes a close call. Perhaps the answer to this is to simply lay a grid of lines spaced 1m apart across the entire pitch and ask the VAR to decide based on that?
@GraemeS , you're talking complete sense for a change
its good to see some people in lockdown are gaining marbles and not losing them like the rest of us!! Keep it up mate!!
Thanks?@GraemeS , you're talking complete sense for a change
RefIADad
RefChat Addict
Offside is not a binary decision on replay. There are variables with how accurate the lines are and what frame is chosen. Whether people like it or not, there is a point where the technology is inconclusive and the call on the field needs to stand.
The TV folks trying to draw lines is less accurate than what the officials are doing, so I wouldn’t trust their accuracy at all.
I'm not sure I totally agree with that - there's some subjectivity in the choice of frame, but I do think that once you've picked a frame, it should be possible to get a definite answer from that picture. You can dispute the "accuracy" of that picture, but there is a definite answer that can be generated once you've made that initial assumption.
Anyway, that's beside the point. Whether I agree with you or not, Sky and BT aren't going to stop doing it, and they're not going to read out all the necessary caveats surrounding that picture when they show it - they're going to put a picture on TV and say "look, he's offside, the goal that caused [Team X] to be relegated should have been disallowed". Better they use the same pictures the VAR uses rather than referees pretending the tech doesn't exist and TV companies then making up their own version of correct/incorrect.
Russell Jones
RefChat Addict
One thought to consider though ... as last (this?!) season progressed, the media, including the broadcasters, were becoming increasingly frustrated with the way VAR was being implemented, including the offsides. The EFL now helping them realise that they were historically part of the problem and that it's in everyone's interest, theirs included, for them to be part of the solution by not highlighting miniscule "errors", might just work.
I'd like to think you're right, but the endless quest for scoops and controversy means I don't see how that can remain the case in the long run. Scrap VAR and you might get a few weeks of broadcasters playing along, but it will only take one missed flag and some pundit somewhere will have a moan about an assistant, perhaps throw in a joke comment like "even without var they should have caught that". And then you've started the cycle over again and it won't be long before some producer at BT thinks they can make the headlines by pointing out a tight missed call and so on and so on....
RefIADad
RefChat Addict
Call me idealistic, but I think we can reach a happy medium. As long as the pundits can admit to themselves and the audience that there are some calls that are too close to overturn, we can keep VAR and use it closer to the theoretical "minimum intrusion, maximum benefit" usage that was sold to us once upon a time.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, for me I want to see calls overturned like the Liverpool-West Ham offside that wasn't called. Even if it's against my team, I really don't care if a goal is given when some player's big toenail might be offside assuming the VAR picks the right frame and then spends four minutes connecting the dots on the big screen to body parts accurately. I'm fine with razor-thin close calls reverting to the call on the field standing. I get that the media will attempt to nit-pick every decision, because generating controversy is part and parcel for the media. I just don't think fans will see it the same way if they are really being objectively honest about things.
Or to put it more succinctly, there is no way the call that Sheffield's Finest showed earlier in this thread should have been overturned. I remember watching that game, and it took nearly four minutes to present a picture that was still inconclusive (and I don't care what anybody says about the precision of drawing lines, etc.).
