VARargh

[RED-DOG]

Going to be fun In the knockout stages when the stakes go up. Chaos tonight with VAR

I know. That ref definitely wants putting out to grass.

[bobby1]

Going to be fun In the knockout stages when the stakes go up. Chaos tonight with VAR

Chaos if you spend your time listening to the utter rubbish on TV panels and commentators trying to create controversy.

[Doobs]

Going to be fun In the knockout stages when the stakes go up. Chaos tonight with VAR

Chaos if you spend your time listening to the utter rubbish on TV panels and commentators trying to create controversy.

I just assume that Lawrenson is just an old fart who is too resistant to change.  How can the odd bad decision be worse than several more bad decisions? 

[RED-DOG]

I'm a big fan of Var, but I don't understand how a referee can watch something several times, including stop frame and slow motion, and still get it completely wrong.

[nirvana]

The Ronaldo pen was a definite pen wasn't it ? Someone please confirm as the idiot Lawrenson has me doubting my own eyes

[kukushkin88]

The Ronaldo pen was a definite pen wasn't it ? Someone please confirm as the idiot Lawrenson has me doubting my own eyes

Yep, clear penalty.

[nirvana]

The Ronaldo pen was a definite pen wasn't it ? Someone please confirm as the idiot Lawrenson has me doubting my own eyes

Yep, clear penalty.

Cheers, I feel better now :-)

[kukushkin88]

I'm a big fan of Var, but I don't understand how a referee can watch something several times, including stop frame and slow motion, and still get it completely wrong.

The controversy seems to be all on the handballs. They are giving penalties for contact with the hand/arm if it is in an ‘unnatural position’. It’s like a new interpretation of ‘deliberate’. Something along the lines of, deliberately putting your arm in a position where you may gain an advantage by blocking the path of the ball, when there is no other good reason for your arm to be there. The decision for the Iran penalty is just a shocker.

[bobby1]

I'm a big fan of Var, but I don't understand how a referee can watch something several times, including stop frame and slow motion, and still get it completely wrong.

I would say that hand ball is one of the only few spot this can happen Tom.  Technically it was hand ball but surely accidental on this occasion, for the ref to decide it was deliberate was terrible. The Spain game was decided by an over turned offside decision, offsides and ball over the line etc should be given correct almost all the time in those spots. Handball going to be one of the grey areas in the system.

In the Portugal game there was an off the ball incident where Ronaldo went out of his way to make contact with his elbow to an opponents neck. The incident was reviewed by VAR and I thought it was a sending off because he set out to strike the opposition player. He was given a yellow card which felt like a cop out to be honest, as in the ref determined he was guilty but only gave him a yellow. Deciding deliberate acts still going to be tricky using the VAR system but on this occasion Ronaldo deserved to be punished when he wasn’t originally even tho the ref still had to make a call regarding how deliberate it was.

Doobs made a good point imo, the cov on TV seems to think it’s still better to have loads of bad decisions in a game without VAR instead of having the ability to over turn incorrect decisions however many times they happen.

[nirvana]

I'm a big fan of Var, but I don't understand how a referee can watch something several times, including stop frame and slow motion, and still get it completely wrong.

The controversy seems to be all on the handballs. They are giving penalties for contact with the hand/arm if it is in an ‘unnatural position’. It’s like a new interpretation of ‘deliberate’. Something along the lines of, deliberately putting your arm in a position where you may gain an advantage by blocking the path of the ball, when there is no other good reason for your arm to be there. The decision for the Iran penalty is just a shocker.

I'd kind of always interpreted deliberate handball along these lines in terms of being in an unnatural place as well as obviously moving hand to ball. Like you say, the Iran pen was just nonsense.

VAR struggles more with these things that heavily rely on individual refereeing style - ie there's every chance that on a given decision some will agree, some won't which isn't a criticism of VAR per se but still leaves the game imperfect which I think I'm OK with.

Like the Ronaldo booking perhaps - I can see some refs thinking that's a red whereas I thought it was nothing at all but VAR isn't the issue really. Hopefully, over time, the VAR guys off the pitch, will become better judges at only stopping the game for pretty obvious errors

[nirvana]

Ha, its difficult, wasn't posting in response to Bobby but we both saw an incident and saw it completely differently- I thought the Iranian player deliberately tried to obstruct Ronaldo and it's fairly common when playing to put your arm over / across the other guys shoulder to get in front of him. It might be foul if he doesn't give the original obstruction but wouldn't see it as a red

[4KSuited]

I think Lawrenson blurts out stuff before he thinks about it, and because he's painted himself into a corner regarding the Ronaldo penalty incident, he refuses to adjust his position. A bit childish really. Like his EPL predictions that Liverpool will never lose, lol.

Shearer, on the other hand, I find a bit more disappointing. He was a vocal critic of VAR from the outset, and he can't help deriding the system whenever there's any kind of error or delay in the process. Even though we're all in a far better place, having 80% of decisions made correctly - even if with a slight delay - rather than less than 50%c (my estimates). He was the only anti-VAR pundit on the show, and he's beginning to make a fool of himself, which is a shame.

The VAR investigation into Spain's equaliser was brought about by the lino being a little too fast with his flag. I think the ref would've simply given the goal. Easy for me to say from my armchair, but the striker always looked level with the last defender. I thought it became a little comical in the BBC studio when they said that the Spanish forward's elbow was exactly level with the Moroccan defender's foot. Thank the lord that the goal wasn't disallowed on the basis of an elbow being closer to goal than the foot....

[Chompy]

Comedy listening to TV dinosaurs moaning about VAR.

Lawrenson is such a dick. Shearer is old before his time. Steve Wilson puts in plenty of research but hasn't got a clue what he's watching most of the time.

Can't stand in the way of progress.

[RED-DOG]

Ball goes into crowd.

Lawrenson: We're in Russia, that's never coming back.

[Chompy]

.