Whitey Grandad

I’m an ex-referee. I don’t over think anything. In your last sentence here you say “not all of them end with a mistimed tackle” which means that you accept that at least some of them do. So I repeat, is being pulled down by your own shirt an offence, and if not, why not?

His shirt was being pulled as he tried to make the tackle. That’s why it was mistimed. Or do you think that shirt pulling is not a foul in itself?

Aribo being dragged down by the pull on his shirt?

I call it shirking from home.

Photographers go looking for angles such as this.

What’s the betting on when we are going to be officially relegated?

It does happen but not very often. It takes balls and an experienced referee. A junior or fresh one will feel under pressure to make the decision that VAR have recommended. And replays should never be shown in slow motion in my view. It distorts reality. There is also the psychological aspect that the more times you see an event the more you will convince yourself that an action must have been deliberate.

Bednarek was a cause of many of those goals.

I assume that you’ve never refereed a game yourself? Nor ever been involved in TV signal processing?t the resolution of a TV picture is several orders worse than a human eye, and a referee has two of them and sees everything in 3 dimensions. The projection of the field of play onto a flat screen is not exact and depends on the type of lens used together with other factors. Those straight lines that you see on the TV are not straight projections from what is on the pitch. The only thing that is completely skewed here is the illusion that TV gives you. It may seem bizarre to you if you don’t understand any of these factors.

Not a clue. Wasted on me.

To be fair I’ve been disappointed with Ramsdale on that account.

Because he hasn’t been picked?

Maybe not, but we should have had the chance to find out.

Just once, some day, I would love the referee to say to VAR “This is taking far too long, you’ve had enough time, I’m going to go with our original decision”.

As controversial as any statement. With VAR the time taken is not “pondering over decisions. It’s in try to get the technology set up so as to take those decisions and that is the same no matter who is making them. On the actual pitch decisions are taken almost instantly and are no less accurate than those of VAR. I have consistently maintained that the view on TV is distorted and less precise than that of someone who sees things close up and live. I have seen nothing to change my point of view.

There is a process to follow and it cannot be rushed. Hence the delays. Why do you think they would be more accurate?

It would still be interfering and re-refereeing the game and it wouldn't be any quicker or more accurate, just different

But you can't separate the one from the other. Therefore VAR is a shit idea.

If you can’t see any dragons you should be ok.

If you didn’t have such an unusually shaped thingy their job might be easier.

On holiday?

Wasn’t Ake there on loan from Chelsea?

When was that? I have only shopped there occasionally and I shall never shop there again having been treated like a dog that had wandered in from the car park. It’s now almost exclusively self-scan and the layout of these terminals means that customers with trolleys get in the way of the staff member who is there to provide customer assistance. These are typically young and inexperienced and they can get frustrated. It’s all a result of reducing the numbers of experienced staff and relying on the customers to do their work instead. Incidentally, how many large supermarkets feel the need to employ uniformed security agents?

‘Customer Service’ is non-existent these days. Don’t even mention AAsDa in Chandlers Ford. Customers are there just to get in their way and they break down in tears if you even think of complaining.

I did some work in Canada in the 80’s and the company I worked for used a head hunter to find the people they needed. Of course that head hunter then had a catalogue of people whom he had helped to find jobs and continued to find further jobs for them with other companies.