Big club bias

table said:
If we had taken our chances and been out of sight by half-time, for some people it would have been because "United were utter dog-shite". When we win by the odd goal it's a case of "If they'd taken those early chances, We'd have lost that". It's human nature, some of us "hope for the best", some of us "fear the worst" : )

I think we know what camp I'm in. My view is still, the refs cost us two points. It wasn't an inconsistent performance, all the big decisions went one way, consistently. Our slightly makeshift team beat theirs, in all but the most important thing, goals. Leaves us "Hoping for the best", them "fearing the worst" : )
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Taking our chances was the key point there. We were better than them, it would be difficult to argue against that.
 
Cherry Warrior said:
Yep cos it wasn't the so called trio that made him fall but the arm across his chest that continued into the box.....surely than that is also an obvious error that the ref got it wrong in terms of what caused the actual foul?
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You don't end up lying on your back if you're tripped while running full tilt.
 
OntarioPhil said:
Perhaps mate, but with two defenders and a goalkeeper to beat, and Christie not having complete control of the ball, litigates against SPA - in my opinion.

I mention the second caution possibility only to understand whether a second caution here would have resulted in a Send-Off. Law 12 goes into detail regarding Cautions and Dismissals. Maybe this was an influencer in the decision - just putting that out there.
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Promising Attack will always have to beat the goalkeeper surely.

So the decision is based on opinion and both the on field ref and VAR opinions were the attacker was fouled

So the influence is based on Law 12 having the intention to give licence to commit a yellow card offence if the player has previously been shown a card ????

A Howard Webb master class in avoiding saying the officials screwed up and are covering up
 
Reference the Smudge handball I had a look at the FA site - someone please tell me how that was a penalty. Also, I thought there was something to do with a penalty could only be awarded if it stopped a direct scoring opportunity, or is that just for an actual foul inside the penalty box?

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I don’t think it hit that high on his arm. On the other hand, I was not entirely convinced that his arm was away from his body. That’s probably my bias at work.
 
Kicks_On_66 said:
I don’t think it hit that high on his arm. On the other hand, I was not entirely convinced that his arm was away from his body. That’s probably my bias at work.
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Weirdly they use the "sleeve" definition but that's a (I assume official) graphic where a sleeve ends higher than the armpit.
 
JIMNNINA said:
Promising Attack will always have to beat the goalkeeper surely.

So the decision is based on opinion and both the on field ref and VAR opinions were the attacker was fouled

So the influence is based on Law 12 having the intention to give licence to commit a yellow card offence if the player has previously been shown a card ????

A Howard Webb master class in avoiding saying the officials screwed up and are covering up
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Well I am going to put my Referee Instructor hat back on, JIMNNINA, because your message rather confused me.

As the referee, you decided a foul had been committed, so you stop play.
Then you decide what the restart should be, and, thinking that the foul had been committed inside the penalty area, you correctly decide the restart should be a penalty kick.

Next you need to decide whether any further punishment is due (card).
Here I will turn to Law 12 itself. A player shall be cautioned UNLESS he
  • commits any other offence which interferes with or stops a promising attack except where the referee awards a penalty kick for an offence which was an attempt to play the ball or for a challenge for the ball
Because he awarded a penalty, he can no longer caution the player for the offence.
So far the referee has performed faultlessly.

Because VAR decides that the foul happened outside the penalty area, the restart becomes a direct free kick, not a penalty kick.
Can the referee now caution the player - yes he can, for UNSPORTING BEHAVIOUR - perhaps! But for this to happen the foul has to fit one of twelve specific offenses (of Unsporting Behaviour), they are all listed in Law 12 of course.

For me the only one of the twelve which might fit, is SPA (Stopping a Promising Attack), and I don't see that here.
As I've said earlier, Christie has to beat two defenders plus the goalkeeper, and have good control of the ball, which he does not. Because of this it is not a Promising Attack for me, so no grounds to caution for this one foul.

I raised the question earlier of one of the defenders having previously been cautioned, only to consider whether this might have influenced any misconduct action taken by the referee.
Here however, as you can now see, a caution is not required even if emotionally we feel it should have been applied.

To answer your other question, the goalkeeper is not always involved in making the SPA decision - he may be out of position for instance. It comes down to the distance from goal, number and position of defenders, & ball control.

To the final comment about screwing up.
The only thing I would have wanted the referee to do differently and few do, is check the pitch-side monitor to review the incident. He had the option then to overrule VAR if his review still indicated his original decision was correct.
VAR actually did what it was authorised to do, and here is the biggest flaw in the system. He was told (we believe) the the fouls was a, trip. All they checked for then, was where did the trip occur, inside or outside the penalty area. What we really want VAR to do is decide that it was not a trip but actually holding - don't we? However that would be re-refereeing the game and VAR is not authorised to do that.

I hope that this helps guys.

I am on the side of AFCB, but my career in football has me automatically assessing match official performance and decision-making even if that does not favour my club.
 
(we believe)

Who is this we and what makes them believe based on what information?

VAR did re referee as he did not use the replays available on the pitch side monitor.
 
Smidsy said:
It would be so much better if the ref could broadcast his decision to everyone. At least we would know what he was looking at. Then VAR would be looking at the same thing.
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Having heard the confusing talking over each other audio for incidents that have be broadcasted it’s no surprise there is so much mess and inconsistency!
 
OntarioPhil said:
Well I am going to put my Referee Instructor hat back on, JIMNNINA, because your message rather confused me.

As the referee, you decided a foul had been committed, so you stop play.
Then you decide what the restart should be, and, thinking that the foul had been committed inside the penalty area, you correctly decide the restart should be a penalty kick.

Next you need to decide whether any further punishment is due (card).
Here I will turn to Law 12 itself. A player shall be cautioned UNLESS he
  • commits any other offence which interferes with or stops a promising attack except where the referee awards a penalty kick for an offence which was an attempt to play the ball or for a challenge for the ball
Because he awarded a penalty, he can no longer caution the player for the offence.
So far the referee has performed faultlessly.

Because VAR decides that the foul happened outside the penalty area, the restart becomes a direct free kick, not a penalty kick.
Can the referee now caution the player - yes he can, for UNSPORTING BEHAVIOUR - perhaps! But for this to happen the foul has to fit one of twelve specific offenses (of Unsporting Behaviour), they are all listed in Law 12 of course.

For me the only one of the twelve which might fit, is SPA (Stopping a Promising Attack), and I don't see that here.
As I've said earlier, Christie has to beat two defenders plus the goalkeeper, and have good control of the ball, which he does not. Because of this it is not a Promising Attack for me, so no grounds to caution for this one foul.

I raised the question earlier of one of the defenders having previously been cautioned, only to consider whether this might have influenced any misconduct action taken by the referee.
Here however, as you can now see, a caution is not required even if emotionally we feel it should have been applied.

To answer your other question, the goalkeeper is not always involved in making the SPA decision - he may be out of position for instance. It comes down to the distance from goal, number and position of defenders, & ball control.

To the final comment about screwing up.
The only thing I would have wanted the referee to do differently and few do, is check the pitch-side monitor to review the incident. He had the option then to overrule VAR if his review still indicated his original decision was correct.
VAR actually did what it was authorised to do, and here is the biggest flaw in the system. He was told (we believe) the the fouls was a, trip. All they checked for then, was where did the trip occur, inside or outside the penalty area. What we really want VAR to do is decide that it was not a trip but actually holding - don't we? However that would be re-refereeing the game and VAR is not authorised to do that.

I hope that this helps guys.

I am on the side of AFCB, but my career in football has me automatically assessing match official performance and decision-making even if that does not favour my club.
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Have you and SDD shared red cards?
 
I think for us as a small club VAR is basically becoming the footballing equivalent of "The computer says NO"
Specific decisions on specific points are looked at and the situation is not analysed holistically.

So the decision to disallow the penalty went like this -
1. Referee sees offence and awards Pen
2. VAR checks penalty decision, asks Ref, "what was the offence?"
3. Ref says "There was a trip"
4. VAR says the trip happened outside the box, no penalty, free kick. No consideration is given to rule 12.3 because there is no mention of holding.

There's no consideration given to the fact that he may have been able to stay on his feet if he hadn't been clotheslined and held (inside the box)

I think VAR should be scrapped because the only thing it seems to add is more opportunity for subjective decisions to be made in a biased way. Frequently we see decisions made on specific point in time moments and the rest of the play around that specific moment in time is completely disregarded, only if it suits the bias of VAR, they can either selectively ignore the situation because they're focused on some minutiae or ignore the minutiae because of the rest of the situation.

Really the same applies to the Smith handball, the argument is made that his arm moves to the ball, maybe if you watch in slow motion and only at specific frames of footage, but holistically I think Smith sees the ball coming towards him, reacts instinctively, then pulls back with no time to make a decision because the ball's going to hit his arm no matter what he does, there's just not enough time to get out of the way. It is a ludicrous decision but the scope of the rules allow the bias to prevail.

We all know, and that includes Man U supporters that if this had been the other way around that both of the decisions would still have gone in favour of the bigger club.
 
R1chardA said:
I think for us as a small club VAR is basically becoming the footballing equivalent of "The computer says NO"
Specific decisions on specific points are looked at and the situation is not analysed holistically.

So the decision to disallow the penalty went like this -
1. Referee sees offence and awards Pen
2. VAR checks penalty decision, asks Ref, "what was the offence?"
3. Ref says "There was a trip"
4. VAR says the trip happened outside the box, no penalty, free kick. No consideration is given to rule 12.3 because there is no mention of holding.

There's no consideration given to the fact that he may have been able to stay on his feet if he hadn't been clotheslined and held (inside the box)

I think VAR should be scrapped because the only thing it seems to add is more opportunity for subjective decisions to be made in a biased way. Frequently we see decisions made on specific point in time moments and the rest of the play around that specific moment in time is completely disregarded, only if it suits the bias of VAR, they can either selectively ignore the situation because they're focused on some minutiae or ignore the minutiae because of the rest of the situation.

Really the same applies to the Smith handball, the argument is made that his arm moves to the ball, maybe if you watch in slow motion and only at specific frames of footage, but holistically I think Smith sees the ball coming towards him, reacts instinctively, then pulls back with no time to make a decision because the ball's going to hit his arm no matter what he does, there's just not enough time to get out of the way. It is a ludicrous decision but the scope of the rules allow the bias to prevail.

We all know, and that includes Man U supporters that if this had been the other way around that both of the decisions would still have gone in favour of the bigger club.
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Agree entirely with your last paragraph in particular.

I have also noted that in a situation where we are winning a game 1-0 against a top six 'big hitter' club away from home, the referee will always find an extra few minuted to add on. This I believe is to give the big club every chance of getting something from the game. We can have a situation with little Bournemouth winning away at Man City. We can't have that now can we!
 
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R1chardA said:
I think for us as a small club VAR is basically becoming the footballing equivalent of "The computer says NO"
Specific decisions on specific points are looked at and the situation is not analysed holistically.

So the decision to disallow the penalty went like this -
1. Referee sees offence and awards Pen
2. VAR checks penalty decision, asks Ref, "what was the offence?"
3. Ref says "There was a trip"
4. VAR says the trip happened outside the box, no penalty, free kick. No consideration is given to rule 12.3 because there is no mention of holding.

There's no consideration given to the fact that he may have been able to stay on his feet if he hadn't been clotheslined and held (inside the box)

I think VAR should be scrapped because the only thing it seems to add is more opportunity for subjective decisions to be made in a biased way. Frequently we see decisions made on specific point in time moments and the rest of the play around that specific moment in time is completely disregarded, only if it suits the bias of VAR, they can either selectively ignore the situation because they're focused on some minutiae or ignore the minutiae because of the rest of the situation.

Really the same applies to the Smith handball, the argument is made that his arm moves to the ball, maybe if you watch in slow motion and only at specific frames of footage, but holistically I think Smith sees the ball coming towards him, reacts instinctively, then pulls back with no time to make a decision because the ball's going to hit his arm no matter what he does, there's just not enough time to get out of the way. It is a ludicrous decision but the scope of the rules allow the bias to prevail.

We all know, and that includes Man U supporters that if this had been the other way around that both of the decisions would still have gone in favour of the bigger club.
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This was one of the reasons I opposed VAR. You have an extra set of people looking at a decision who are paranoid about being called out by a Pep or a Klopp and the ensuing media debate for getting things wrong.

The only one reason I could see for VAR before we had it was it might provide more
clarity and transparency. Now that we know that it’s actually the opposite case it’s the final nail in the coffin.
 
Neil Dawson said:
This was one of the reasons I opposed VAR. You have an extra set of people looking at a decision who are paranoid about being called out by a Pep or a Klopp and the ensuing media debate for getting things wrong.

The only one reason I could see for VAR before we had it was it might provide more
clarity and transparency. Now that we know that it’s actually the opposite case it’s the final nail in the coffin.
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Perhaps people in the VAR control centre should wear hoods or something, like executioners had too.
 
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