[Football] VAR April 2023 Poll - Fit for Purpose?

[Herr Tubthumper]

It needs a mission statement - what function do you want it to serve?

I thought it’s function or mission statement was to prevent the absolute howler, such as Henry’s handball preventing Ireland going to the World Cup, or Lampard’s shot against Germany.

However the English game’s implementation of VAR doesn’t appear to have a mission statement or working parameters. It goes from spending an age measuring to the nearest millimetre offsides to not looking at clear penalties.

Cricket, rugby and tennis have been mentioned and they all had clear mandates, in the case of cricket the technology could never undermine the authority of the umpire. As a result cricket umpiring has improved, umpires make less mistakes and are bolder in giving LBWs because technology has assisted them and they’ve gained confidence through it.

What football seems unable to accept or deal with is a system that is designed not to be perfect and doesn’t seek to be so. Once you take needing you get everything absolutely correct, you probably get to a workable system, but the first step is accepting it cannot be perfect by those that design and work it.

The laws also need to be aligned with the new technology as well. I have said before the offside law was brought in to stop goal-hanging. Now it’s being used to punish players who broadly following this law. A yard offside should correctly be punished…..an armpit shouldn’t.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

IF VAR is ever to work they absolutely have to broadcast what is going on at Stockley Park.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

If a process or system in a well run business doesn’t improve a product or service, it is very unusual for there not to be some remedial action. In an entertainment business if a process or system makes the product worse, especially for the most loyal customers who consume the product live, then it’s usually withdrawn, developed, tested and then reimplemented.

VAR does not (currently) have the specific technologies to overcome its shortcomings. It’s being tested in real time with opaque rules and transparency and (in my humble opinion) has made Football a MUCH poorer product and experience. This is absolutely nothing to do with Luddite tendencies. VAR is shit and has been shit since its introduction. Saturday was probably its worst ever showing. It’s not just Albion fans saying this!!

I agree with all of that, except the solution I suspect. The bad decisions were made by the officials, not VAR. I initially said, when VAR came in, that refs were sabotaging it, making it longwinded, so that it would be binned. I suspect this was an unconscious bias of theirs. But they no longer need to sabotage VAR because they have succeeded in ensuring that the on pitch ref is King (the decision maker), which means the on field ref can overrule VAR according to their expert judgement (which is sometimes merely whim). This is a massive rubric flaw in my view.

One unintended consequence is that it has intimidated the VAR ref who is frightened to trigger a review if he is uncertain whether the error is clear and obvious. And at the same time the on field ref may not call a decision, expecting to be triggered by the VAR ref if he's missed something. When it isn't clear who owns the decision there can be only one outcome. We saw that over our disallowed goals, I suspect.

I think all this could be fixed easily, but only if the goal is to create a rubric to reach correct decisions quickly, and nothing else. If part of the rubric is to maintain the supremacy of the on-pitch ref then it will never work as it should.

I have been through a process of improving standards in my academic field and I met with massive pushback from people (journal associate editors, research funding managers, opinion leaders) who felt that creation of rules and rubrics that were largely operable outside of their control undermined their special position. I am convinced this is one of the problems with VAR.

That aside I agree with you that it is almost impossible to safely beta test an innovation in a real world setting when the stakes are high. The consequences of suboptimal performance can be unacceptable. Unfortunately VAR is being beta tested in an experiment where nobody has defined what success and failure look like! Instead we have a catherdal of howling supporters, punters and managers most of whome feel they are being dicked around by a thing called VAR, not apparently realizing that those who own the game (the clubs and PGMOL in this instance) are engaged in a one-hand-clapping exercise.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Lots to disagree with there but I will focus on your comparisons. Speeding and drink driving thresholds are binary and measurable. The only comparative in football is goal line technology. Everything else is subjective with varying probabilities of agreement.

Ps it is not Luddite to be of the opinion that this particular technology does not enhance the game.

Fair points. I have made other arguments elsewhere for a need to improve VAR rather than bin it (which would be Luddite), perhaps the main one being that as far as I can see, it simply won't happen so why consider it?

Binning VAR is about as much on the agenda and in the minds of those who run the game as revisiting our EU membership is on the agenda and in the minds of those who run our two major political parties.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Now read the rest of the sentence

Yes, it says getting the decision wrong is indefensible. I agree. I hope I didn't say I disagreed.

I was making a different point about people (not you) complaining about the length of the decision making and putting forward the argument that the main reason for binning VAR is that it disrupts the flow of the game, spoiling spontaneity (the main part of football fun), and that it would be better to have wrong decisions in real time than correct decisions after a delay. I am being very specific here. Some people including posters on here have said they would rather have a perfectly good Brighton goal chalked off incorrectly in real time, than have to wait for the goal to be confirmed by a VAR check.

I have also made the point that rushing VAR decisions (as happened at Spuds) leads to mistakes. In fact if VAR does not take the necessary time there is not point having it at all.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

It worked ok during the WC

Long waits, no TV images, still some stupid offside calls and decisions.

I'm not sure it was great.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

There’s nothing wrong with the technology, as tennis, rugby and cricket show.
Those using it, however!

Tennis/Rugby/Cricket are mainly binary calls or have other tech to help such as Hawkeye with natural breaks in the game.

 

[surlyseagull]

The VAR Review: Unpacking Brighton penalty error vs. Spurs

In this week's VAR Review: Unpacking all the drama as Brighton lost 2-1 at Tottenham Hotspur, plus a soft penalty for Brentford against Newcastle.

www.espn.co.uk

Found this rather interesting.

 

[Triggaaar]

VAR has been a shit show, on that we pretty much all agree.

The question is why?

Would it never be possible to get it to work well, or is it being run by incompetent idiots?

Personally I feel it's the latter.

Had their been no VAR on Saturday it still would have been a complete farce, although we would have got MacAllister's goal. But with someone competent in the VAR box we'd have got some penalties too, we'd have got the 3 points, and no one here would be complaining.

 

[Guy Fawkes]

It's not fit for purpose only because of the people using it are not up to standard and serious improvements in their ability to use it effectively and correctly are needed

 

[surlyseagull]

The VAR Review: Unpacking Brighton penalty error vs. Spurs

In this week's VAR Review: Unpacking all the drama as Brighton lost 2-1 at Tottenham Hotspur, plus a soft penalty for Brentford against Newcastle.

www.espn.co.uk

Found this rather interesting.

Sorry didn't realise had already been posted

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

Nope, most definately not fit for purpose. Keep goal line technology, that's the one good thing to come out of it, but give all the other decisions back to the on pitch referee. It wasn't broken before, so why the need to try and fix it?

 

[GT49er]

It's not fit for purpose, at all. But I don't think getting rid of it entirely is the answer.

Getting rid of it entirely could be the answer - but the broadcasters will have to change their policies. If we're looking for reasons why we've got VAR, SKY (in particular, but other broadcasters too) are very much guilty parties.
Back in the day, if there was a dodgy offside decision, a wrongly awarded (or not awarded) penalty or red card we'd boo it at the ground, gtumble about it on the way home, and maybe read about it in John Vinnicombe's Monday colunmn in the Argus (or in the national papers for events in the first division) - and that would be it.
Then along came SKY - suddenly every decision was being discussed by pundits to the nth degree, and shown on TV from every angle and in slow motion (MOTD quickly cottoned on to doing this too) and suddenly we had a problem with refereeing that we didn't have before - and because the problem had been generated, a 'solution' had to be found. The genie is out of the bottle - ditching VAR could be the answer - but the TV companies would have to agree to stop being super-clever and questionning and analysing everything in such minute detail, and highlighting every possible error made by the referee. Soehow I think they're too wedded to that idea to give it up.
Shame.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Fair points. I have made other arguments elsewhere for a need to improve VAR rather than bin it (which would be Luddite), perhaps the main one being that as far as I can see, it simply won't happen so why consider it?

Binning VAR is about as much on the agenda and in the minds of those who run the game as revisiting our EU membership is on the agenda and in the minds of those who run our two major political parties.

What would this improvement look like ?

 

[Blues Guitarist]

Let's clear the first bit up first. VAR will not be binned.

Second, blaming bad decisions on the excessive length of time taken to make them. Really?

As I have said repeatedly since Saturday, the problem at the weekend was the VAR official spent too little time, mere seconds, making his decision.

The next myth is that VAR is no more accurate than no VAR. I have watched loads of Championship football this season. There have been loads of errors made with goals falsely chalked off or falsely given when the right decision would have certainly been made had VAR been in use. And, guess what? Next season the championship will use VAR. According to some on here this is being done to lend an unfair advantage to the top six. Part of a conspiracy.

The fact is that VAR, like speed limits and drink driving thresholds are here to stay. We simply need to get the rubric to work.

The biggest obstacles are:

1. The on-pitch ref has the final say. This is how we have come to this clear and obvious bollocks.
Solution? Give the VAR ref the final say. He is the one with the tech.
2. The obsession among many fans to not lose a nanosecond of their football enjoyment experience waiting for a VAR decision, and the repeated drone in the media about this. Solution: give the VAR ref adequate but limited time to make the decision. I have mooted 20 sec, but maybe 40 sec is fairer. After that, go with the on field ref's whim. DON'T do what happened on Saturday and tell the ref it was handball when you clearly cannot tell if it was handball. That was an absolute failure of process. And it was the fault of a foolish man, not VAR.

All events that pissed us off yesterday should have been checked. Denial of a goal scoring opportunity (arguably Mitoma's wasn't but I'll park that) and the scoring of a goal. Our chalked off goals were chalked off due to ignorance (the shoulder cannot handle the ball) and haste (the second chalked off goal is not visibly a hand ball so the VAR ref rushed it and made the wrong decision).

Haste and incompetence. There should be no room for this in football refereeing.

But going back to the pre-VAR era, and agitating for this, is a Luddite imperative. May as well petition for the abolition of speed limits. I really can't understand how some people are still clinging on to this pipedream.

Before VAR we used to spend Saturday evenings watching MOTD where they showed slow motion replays of mistaken referee decisions and we all thought - if only the officials had access to that information in near real time football would be much better.

Now we spend Saturday evenings watching MOTD discussing the errors that VAR staff have made. The most highly trained football watchers in the country make decision after decision that everyone can see are wrong. Can they really be that incompetent? If so, get Shearer and Ian Wright on VAR (except for Newcastle and Aresenal games ).

 

[Springal]

What would this improvement look like ?

Officials that were more accurate in making correct decisions. Simple

 

[Weststander]

1. The laws of the game state the on-field ref is ultimately in charge of the game. If this changes, we will soon reach the point where every slightly contentious decision made by the on-field ref will be challenged by the players and management team. Absolute disaster if this happens and it rightly won’t.

2. The ‘obsession’ amongst fans is NOT that they are missing football it is that they are not party to any of the replays and discussion of what is actually being checked. IF VAR is ever to work they absolutely have to broadcast what is going on at Stockley Park. Liverpool and Man Utd should be forced to fit big screens even if it means reducing their capacity.

The simple answer, however, is to bin VAR. it has caused more controversy than it has solved.

Regarding (1), players and management will never have an opportunity to challenge.

That’s a red herring.

Rugby Union is the one to follow, a by and large great use of technology and very switched on video assistants.

Managers/coaches/players have zero input in the entire process.

 

[dejavuatbtn]

It’s not VAR, it’s the morons running it. Showing the action on multiple cameras is no use if the bloke in the seat is incompetent. Don’t use refs with “skin in the game”, use ex-pros or former refs.

Or, perhaps, someone with a brain?

 

[Silverhatch]

I agree with all of that, except the solution I suspect. The bad decisions were made by the officials, not VAR. I initially said, when VAR came in, that refs were sabotaging it, making it longwinded, so that it would be binned. I suspect this was an unconscious bias of theirs. But they no longer need to sabotage VAR because they have succeeded in ensuring that the on pitch ref is King (the decision maker), which means the on field ref can overrule VAR according to their expert judgement (which is sometimes merely whim). This is a massive rubric flaw in my view.

One unintended consequence is that it has intimidated the VAR ref who is frightened to trigger a review if he is uncertain whether the error is clear and obvious. And at the same time the on field ref may not call a decision, expecting to be triggered by the VAR ref if he's missed something. When it isn't clear who owns the decision there can be only one outcome. We saw that over our disallowed goals, I suspect.

I think all this could be fixed easily, but only if the goal is to create a rubric to reach correct decisions quickly, and nothing else. If part of the rubric is to maintain the supremacy of the on-pitch ref then it will never work as it should.

I have been through a process of improving standards in my academic field and I met with massive pushback from people (journal associate editors, research funding managers, opinion leaders) who felt that creation of rules and rubrics that were largely operable outside of their control undermined their special position. I am convinced this is one of the problems with VAR.

That aside I agree with you that it is almost impossible to safely beta test an innovation in a real world setting when the stakes are high. The consequences of suboptimal performance can be unacceptable. Unfortunately VAR is being beta tested in an experiment where nobody has defined what success and failure look like! Instead we have a catherdal of howling supporters, punters and managers most of whome feel they are being dicked around by a thing called VAR, not apparently realizing that those who own the game (the clubs and PGMOL in this instance) are engaged in a one-hand-clapping exercise.

Yep. I too have had roles where it was on my head to improve processes and systems. Faced incredible push back from people and failed when the terms of engagement were not simple to understand and implement or, in most cases, where things were rushed to quieten ill-informed board members or twats with self-aggrandising motives. Can we at least agree to stop calling VAR a technology. It clearly is not. There is nothing scientific about a few supposedly professional people looking at TV pictures and trying to interpret what is clear and obvious. The technology is there, or developable, to make the yes or no decisions clear (Goal decision, ball in and out of play and offside). The rest is human interpretation because no one can determine intent.

 

[Arkwright]

While I'm firmly in the bin VAR camp, I am also realistic to know that it's here to stay.
In which case as previously mentioned rules are going to have to change to make life easier for the officials.
I always hoped that the rules would be the same for grassroots to top flight but with the technology I fear this will have to change.
In a nutshell what changes should be made to make VAR games easier to officiate but also make it slicker without waiting minutes for a decision.
Someone earlier said offside was introduced to stop goal hanging maybe change the offside law to allow for body position and accept attackers are moving towards the goal while defenders are stepping up.
I know offside wasn't our issue on Saturday but Laws clearly have to change to embrace the technology and avoid human error.