Improving Advantage and the VAR

Similarly, it appeared a foul was committed on an England player at one end of the pitch before the French went on to score their first, so does the VAR look at fouls the Referee may have missed in general play that don't directly lead to a goal or penalty... and should it?

My view is that it either looks at everything or nothing; do away with it and change back from some rule changes such as offside, revert back to two players between you and the goal and not in line with them.

I do have to say that some of the recent rule changes have done little to improve the game, such as playing backwards from the kick-off and players being able to play the ball in the penalty area from goal kicks, fiddling for the sake of it.

Let's get away with all these "fouls" occurring 5 minutes before a goal
Let's get away from lines drawn for toenails being offside.

The game is being ruined, actually has been ruined with these never ending delays after a goal is scored, microscopic offsides etc etc.
A magical spontaneous sport is slowly being taken away from us

The goal line technology is great as it is instantaneous.
During play if an infraction takes place such as a bad tackle, it can be reviewed at the next stoppage and then be revisited if needed.
VAR is till being interpreted by individuals without consistency, the more we can cut out the VAR operator the better for us and football

Football has cocked this up on two counts. The offside rule is ridiculous and needs revisiting and the officials, both on the pitch and behind the controlled access environment of Stockley Park, are not up to standard.

That's why they hide behind VAR and hid behind pre-VAR. They never come out and explain. VAR isn't used as it should be and why don't we hear the decision making discussion and logic live as we do in Rugby? Because in Rugby, they're not on ego trips or afraid to explain the decision making reasoning.

VAR could have been the answer to many a wrong decision of the past. But the problem still remains. Incompetent officials who are too ups their own arses to admit they were wrong.

Maybe it will get better. We'll see.

Danny totally agree that the off-side rule needs looking at again. A few years ago you could be level with the defender a foot or arm offside wouldn't matter it was the torso of a player. WT feck is going on ?

Lastly we need to be careful as the with Rugby comparrison the odious Springbok Coach is waging war with officials. I really hope we do not go down that route

There's no perfect comparison for football but the essence of the game is to score, surely. So a bawled out "ADVANTAGE" would instantly mean the attacking team can take more risk to score, sure that if they fail there's a free-kick available for the offence for which the ref rightly played advantage.

Call it two bites of the cherry if you like but I like to see as many attempts to score as possible, with foul-play being a perpetual, even more heavily punished, bete-noir to the beautiful game.

They were rambling on and on about the recent Man City -Liverpool match where the ref, as usual, sided with you know who.

Apparently, a disallowed City goal was reviewed by the VAR against the refs wishes because he had told both teams he was "going to let things go" to keep the game flowing but had forgotten to tell the VAR. In other words, the ref was going to ignore the rules of football in this match for the benefit of television.

In conclusion, we can deduce from this that, when it suits and for certain teams, the rules, the very basis of the sport, go out of the window to facilitate the viewing experience on TV.

And no one else apart from me seems to think this is strange.

Decisions about matters of judgement are best made by the officials on the pitch. Interference by the VAR in matters of judgement has undermined the referees by adding a layer of confusion to their decision-making.

Technology may have a part to play in the future. Where it can be deployed quickly, preferably instantly, on matters of fact such as whether a ball has crossed the line or whether a foul is inside the area or outside the area can provide on-pitch officials with the information they need to make accurate, fact-based decisions.

They also overturned 6 onfield decisions which turned out to be correct referee decisions at the time.

They have/will not specify which games, which would have been really interesting to know as it may have shown if the “bigger” teams do indeed benefit from decisions

Surely this information just adds to the call to scrap this nonsense that is the VAR system?

Unfortunately it won't happen; years after its implementation, we'll still be debating this shit.

Danny uses a phrase in post 4 called ‘hide behind' – until we get to hear the referees talking and explaining their decisions right away, then things are not going to change.

Human nature is funny, and although we will never get rid of controversy, I do believe we could slowly begin to eradicate the feeling that ‘we have been cheated'.

The inconsistencies do seem to change depending on whoever is playing, and I don't see how this could continue if the referee had to constantly explain his decisions every single week.

Given it might lead to more entertaining games, less frivolous timewasting, and little or no advantage to the media darling, sadly I doubt it will gain traction.

Notwithstanding the usual openness and officials discussing decisions on the big screen, if you subscribed, you had live access to the commentary between the officials and could listen to them throughout the match if you wanted to.

Those six incidents were highlighted in a daily paper the other day, none of them included any Everton game, although the obvious one versus Man City had already been apologised for by the FA.

None of the advantages gained by Liverpool were in those six incidents, surprise, surprise!!

Webb is looking to recruit ex players which can only be good as they understand the game as well as the rules. Webb also said that he would like to see the VAR used for clear and obvious mistakes as it was originally intended.

He is also looking at, as he calls it, 'drawing back the curtain' on the conversations that happen between the referee and the VAR.

Webb was also a mentor for the World Cup Polish ref who was also an ex player, who made decisions without constantly referring to the VAR.

I hope Webb does introduce these changes, especially were the fee-paying fan can hear and see what the VAR is checking, which happens in every other sport it's used in except football.

The article / video, for those who haven't seen it, is:

Howard Webb: New referees' boss believes the VAR should be quicker & simpler

Former Premier League referee Howard Webb explains how he feels the video assistant referee (VAR) system should be used as he starts work as chief refereeing officer at the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the body responsible for match officials in English professional football.