Whitey Grandad

I’ll leave you guessing for a little while longer I’m such a tease!

Nice try but wrong on all three

At the moment it’s overruling and therefore undermining the official in charge of the game. Yesterday’s downgrading of a red card for a West Ham is a prime example. That tackle was far worse than Bertrand’s against Leicester yet his wasn’t even given as a foul at the time.

In The Times this morning Tony Cascarino has three Saints players in his ‘Team of the Day’. I’ll let you all try to guess their names.

I don’t know how the Spurs fans could have seen anything of that first half incident from over a hundred yards away. Like everybody else I thought that he had just slipped. Whinging slippery toad though, should have been booked several times.

The real question is why Dean didn’t give it. VAR would not normally override a subjective decision where the referee had a clear view of the incident.

I’m afraid I have to agree with you. Seemed inconsistent throughout and was too lax with Dele Alli amongst others. You are right, ever referee receives a report with several videos, one showing the game as seen on TV and another focussing just on him and his decisions with comments on fouls that he should have given as well as ones that he shouldn’t.

I believe that is a current suggestion at FIFA.

Ain’t never gonna happen. But thanks for the kind thought

Played well today. A settled back four helps.

That’s the point. You don’t have to turn your head because your field of view is 120 degrees. Some people can’t assimilate the complete field of view and are called ‘head turners’. These people have to point their head towards whatever they’re looking at. Others can see what’s happening out of the sides of their eyes. The assistant (linesman) automatically positions him/herself level with the second to last defender so that when the ball is kicked they only need to decide whether the attacker is nearer the goal than themselves. It is a specialised profession and requires years of practice to be good at it.

It is possible with training to survey and evaluate the complete field of view. Some people can’t do it. Ironically the referee is in a good position to see both when the ball is kicked and whether the recipient is offside in most instances except for the tight calls which is where the assistant comes in. You’re right, either the law must change or its application must be reviewed. There’s quite a bit about it in The Times today with FIFA talking about ‘clear daylight’ between the attacker and the defender. Apparently in the US MLS the VAR review of offside is done with the naked eye, no lines are artificially drawn across the pitch. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-pressure-for-overhaul-of-offside-law-bt57vgnfv (Possible paywall)

And the VAR decisions are ‘correct’? If that were true there wouldn’t be so much fuss and bother over them.

Following that argument it would be best to disallow all goals just to be sure.

It doesn’t work like that. The assistant is constantly scanning the field of view. Human visual awareness can cover many things simultaneously.

And they are miles away from the action and looking at the game through blurry off-axis pictures.

But will we still be top at the end of the season?

You can with enough practice. You can switch from one to the other quicker than a camera can take another frame.

They aren’t middle-aged and they aren’t all men. These are highly-trained and experienced officials that you’re talking about. They have to meet very stringent fitness tests. More importantly they are in the perfect position being right on the sideline and level with the second-last defender. It is very rare that a VAR camera is looking square across the pitch.

Arms don’t count.

Precisely

The problem is that the technology is not accurate enough to judge whether or not an attacker is an inch offside.

Ah, that great pagan festival Eostre.

General Blasphemy? Wasn’t he in the Salvation Army?

Always sad to see a great talent pass over. I lived his work and I even have a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band record somewhere, probably ‘The Intro and the Outro’. Their album ‘Gorilla’ was all the rage in my teenage years.