Arsenal had one shot on target; VAR is not the problem here

Arsenal have created a fuss to mask the fact that they were really poor on Saturday in Newcastle. We have mails on them and many on VAR.

Send your own views to theeditor@footall365.com

Gooners are delusional
Almost 60% possession, one shot on goal, no midfield creativity, goalkeeper is a liability, still whining about VAR.
Andrew J. Morris

A set-piece coach, is it?
Still not watching much football [VAR], but amused by Arsenal having a ‘Set-Piece Coach’, who apparently got on Gary Neville’s nerves by shouting at Trossard for taking a series of bad, erm, set pieces.

It took me back to the heady days of 2008, when it turned out that it cost Newcastle many millions to sack Allardyce and his 19 [NINETEEN] backroom staff – including dieticians, psychologists and more.

It made me [half-jokingly] ask what exactly Allardyce did, if he had that many people to do everything else. One couldn’t imagine Cloughie delegating so much – he did all the haircut advice, transfer wheeler-dealing and pitch invader-clouting himself.

I’d like to be a Set-Piece Coach. [‘It’s a corner. Kick it high enough so it goes over the head of the opposition guy nearest to you, even if he jumps’. ‘It’s an indirect free-kick – the ref has his arm in the air. Don’t shoot’. ‘You’re a West Ham player. Go away and leave it to James’.]
Alex Stokoe, Newcastle upon Tyne

I’ve had enough of this clown show
Let’s start off with VAR. We never needed it, it was more down to incompetent refs than anything else. When VAR was mooted around as the thing to make football great and eliminate mistakes, it just reminds me of Brexit. They tell you all the good things that will come from it, you know, the Lampard Goal for England but neglecting to tell you about the bad and the bad is f**kin bad.

Since its introduction, referee standards have fallen even further, in fact they’ve gone off a cliff because they know that VAR will intervene anyway. Has VAR made anything better for anyone? This weekend, Newcastle will say Yes but next weekend they could easily be complaining. The ball might just have been in, but regardless, that is a foul all day long that the ref would normally have given. But the ref didn’t give a foul as he probably expected VAR to give it on its review. Anyone thinking that isn’t a foul, I look forward to hearing your cries next week when it happens to your team.

Offsides can now be subjective apparently! Yeah ok.

Players are being sent off because they view any kind of tackle that makes contact dangerous, they’ll look with 30 different cameras in super slow motion, which makes every tackle with contact look horrendous. To make things worse, the player fouled knows this so will milk it for all it’s worth.

If any sort of holding in the area is a foul and is generally looked at then then every game would have multiple pens, guess it just depends on how well the player falls over, who they play for and who the player is. Strange how they never show you the build up where the attacker is also holding and normally holding the defenders arms in place, before letting go and falling over, screaming in agony whilst staring straight at the ref. It’s called looking for it for a reason.

Almost every team is getting it and no, that doesn’t balance itself out. Rather than the on field Ref making the foul/no foul, offside/no offside decision on goals, it’s being left to VAR who now look at things subjectively.

Why is VAR getting involved in tackles if the Ref has already spotted a foul and deemed it a booking? but then after 3 minutes of VAR scouring every angle, the ref gets told to look at the monitor because in super slow mo, from just the right angle that they have chosen, it looks a damn sight worse than it was, so the yellow gets turned to a red.

Man Utd might get a VAR decision go their way next week, but that isn’t cancelling anything out as it will be against Luton and not say against Arsenal. First game of the season, Wolves should have had a penalty in the last minute against us, is that cancelled out because Wolves might get dodgy Pen when they play Sheff Utd? Of course it isn’t. I think Utd fans, would have preferred the correct decision of a Penalty on Hojlund against Arsenal, holding in the area is a Penalty remember, and concede the correct decision of Pen against us Vs Wolves.

Refs seem afraid to give anything or told not to, all in the name of letting the game flow and letting VAR decide from a dark room in the middle of who knows where. They’ll then stop the game for 4 minutes whilst everything is checked, FOUR MINUTES! Sadio Mane scored a bloody hattrick for Southampton in 2 minutes 56 seconds. That record will never be beaten as it will take them longer just to check one goal. Sometimes though they let the game flow for those minutes because the ref and assistants have seen nothing, before then stopping it to award a Penalty. Unless your name is Liverpool where they will just decide to carry on and ignore that you just scored.

We’re really sorry Liverpool, have a cookie instead of a possible 3 points and please shut up, it’ll balance itself out ok, we’ll just give you a goal at some point in some other game somewhere, shush, it’ll be ok. Lino’s or assistants don’t flag as much because well, they are incompetent and again, VAR ill check everything.

The way Utd are playing, they could need and get a dodgy VAR penalty next week against Luton that gives them a lucky 1-0 win, by the balancing out narrative, Luton might get a dodgy VAR penalty go their way against say, Man City, the problem is City are 8-0 up at the time. What am I on about, VAR giving a decision against City? too funny.

This is how mental the rules have become.

Goalkeepers now have to keep at least one foot on the line for penalties. Why? So long as any part of the ball overhangs any part of the spot, then all is good and they push that to the millimeter, So why can’t that be the same for keepers? Keepers can use any part of their body, So long as any part of the keeper is overhanging any part of the line, why not?. Be honest, they don’t even get that right all the time. Onana, and I’ve only seen it once, did look suspiciously off his line against Copenhagen. I might be wrong there.

The awarding of penalties, is the arm in a natural position? Well what’s natural? Standing still is different to walking, which is different to running, which is different to jumping and as everyone stands differently, walks, runs and jumps differently, what the hell is natural? I had a mate at school who ran like a spaghetti monster, it was hilarious, but that was him, naturally running.

The offside rule is ridiculous. There was always the joke that women don’t understand offside, how things have changed because nobody understands it now. Sometimes, it’s even sometimes subjective! So it’s subjective based on a persons own subjective thoughts and thoughts are a persons opinion and persons opinion is not the same as someone else’s thoughts and opinion. It’s like someone saying “that’s offensive” when they should say “I find that offensive” because some people will find it funny.

I hate VAR, I hate what it has made football become. I want teams to win, lose or draw fairly and decided on the pitch, not in some dark studio by geeks looking at screens and making the shit up as they go along. It’s a clown show. I do feel a little bit sorry for the refs, stood there like a spare you know what on the set of a adult film while imbeciles pretend they know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t trust them to know how to use a TV remote.
Hugo

…VAR and its use are killing the game.

The biggest problem for me personally is I’ve stopped celebrating goals. I’ve watched football for 36 years and what consumed me was that elation of your team scoring.

The euphoria, the mayhem, the outpouring of emotion being lost in that moment of delirium. Yes sometimes you were stopped by a flag up but that came very quickly. Now a team scores in the final minute you know it’s going to be picked apart and you might as well go for a beer or brew or whatever whilst the officials try find the tiniest fault.

Often the fault found is subjective and under scrutiny could have gone either way so where is the improvement in the watching experience here? It’s a waste of time and a game killer which leads to mangers players supporters pulling their hair out.

If a decision was wrong prior to VAR then it was wrong. Human error in the heat of the moment. Yes there was fall out afterwards sometimes but it was understandable mistakes.

Now after 5 minutes of reviewing multiple angles they get it wrong so why do it?

Football refereeing should be left to real time refereeing and stop killing the passion of the game.

I don’t know why we even have linesmen/women anymore it doesn’t matter if they get it right or wrong they are all checked anyway so what’s the point?

Watch the lower leagues where the games still got a pulse.

Thanks for reading my moans just hate what they’ve done to the game I love.
Dan the Grumpy old football supporter

It’s VAR from the fault of the technology
I don’t think I am alone in being absolutely sick and tired of the VAR being blamed for everything. I think it is worth taking a step back and remembering why we are where we are. The sole reason VAR was introduced was mainly because of managers (and fans and pundits) demanding absolute perfection from referees and assistants every single week. This led us down a path of believing that we could perfect this via the use of VAR.

And what do we have now? Managers moaning constantly about VAR. If VAR wasn’t about, Arteta would be complaining that the ref and assistant got it wrong on Saturday. He demands perfection of refs but seemingly doesn’t demand the same of his players or himself.

The utter inconsistency of this is shown by that after the Jones sending-off in the Spurs Liverpool game a lot of people were saying that VAR cannot re-referee a decision and were demanding that the on-field decision be upheld. And yet now we have Arteta wanting the Newcastle goal to be re-re-refereed because his players (surprise surprise) believe the ball has gone out of play. Where is the consistency that the managers demand?

VAR is utterly flawed and I would scrap it personally. But that is because I can accept that wrong decisions are occasionally made by a ref when he’s making decisions in a split second with players trying to cheat, view is blocked etc. Managers cannot and so we are left with this mess.
J

Johnny needs a lie-down
We get it. Jonny Nic hates VAR, and that’s fine. Personally I don’t agree it should be scrapped – other sports use the same system with nowhere near the controversy or incompetence – but it’s a reasonable position to take. However, he’s written lengthy pieces about it on numerous occasions already, so his latest piece was both completely unnecessary but also a shocking example of confirmation bias.

Arteta was not ‘absolutely right’. He fumed about debatable decisions, there wasn’t a clear cut error in there. It’s interesting that Jonny doesn’t actually refer to any of the incidents in his entire piece, because it shows he isn’t interested in the facts at all, just another chance to kick VAR. If VAR had disallowed the goal, you can bet Jonny would have been writing exactly the same piece supporting whatever Eddie Howe had to say.

Why does this matter? Because officiating is already a far too hard job, and bad faith criticisms of it do not help, whether they are from journalists or self serving club statements. Here’s an idea – why don’t we try to improve the system with constructive suggestions instead of setting impossible standards (no one was promised ‘perfection’ Jonny). The TMO in rugby isn’t perfect but everyone accepts it gets much more right than wrong and that is a good thing. VAR already does the same in football and with a few tweaks can be much better still.
Phil, London

The genie cannot go back in the bottle now
Johnny Nic’s musings on VAR are correct.

We had referees making subjective decisions, and replaced it with referees making subjective decisions, but everything became slower, the replays, the time it takes to come to decisions.

We had hoped consistency would come in.

Then you see Rodri getting a penalty last week, and Van Dijk not.

You see Kovacic staying on the pitch and others not for similar tackles.

Rodri handball against Everton last season, others given for similar.

Onana going all WWE, penalty given for others similar.

Then there is the incompetent nature of it…

Ivan Toney offside for equaliser against Arsenal last year. The Spurs – Liverpool debacle.

It’s clear it doesn’t work, however, it can’t go anywhere, because the first game without it, the call would be “VAR would have picked up on that”.

The only way forward is to improve it.

They can use virtual technology (this could have been in use for Newcastle’s goal) and improve referees training to ensure where a tackle that’s a penalty in game X is also a spot kick in game Y.

Unfortunately, Pandora has opened the box and is currently waving her hands screaming but the evils of VAR can’t be put back in.
Graham

Don’t like VAR? Come to the Championship
Always good to see the emails complaining about decisions rightly or wrongly made by VAR. I’m actually torn between wanting my team to get promoted and having them stay in a league without five minute delays analysing players’ positions to the millimetre.

Hopefully the ‘big’ clubs will F off to their own little cosy super league club and we can all go back to enjoying football on the pitch and not on the TV at Stockley Park.
Steve Leeds since 1970

We need to talk about Bruno
I’m ok with that Newcastle goal being allowed. Not clear and obvious, not a problem.

But that assault (let’s call it what it is) by Bruno? The league has a problem but it’s always explained away.

The passion… oh he’s not that kind of player… it wasn’t excessive… forearm not elbow…
Tired Gooner

…When a severe neck/head injury inevitably occurs, the FA, Premier League and PGMOL will throw their hands up and say how shocked they are.

The refereeing of Bruno in the Newcastle vs Arsenal game was a big “f**k you” to player welfare.
Bob Smith

This means more
​Watching Luis Diaz remind the world of the precarious fate of his kidnapped father after making himself available to play and then scoring an equaliser for his team made me think about the fate of many foreign nationals who practice their trade in the UK. Are we always aware of the full pressures they face in their countries on top of being in the limelight of an often unforgiving success-hungry football arena here? Part and parcel of being among an elite and privilaged sporting cadre, some might say, but for me Diaz’s message was perhaps amongst one of those few times it was appropriate to say This Means More.
Albert, LFC London