‘Disagree with the referee over subjective decisions more often’ is definitely the perfect mid-season advice for the already inconsistent and under-performing English referees on VAR duties. What could possibly go wrong by trying to define what exactly a ‘soft penalty’? There’s no way that could make the VAR decision making even more inconsistent!
Howard Webb is a fucking clown.
We’ve literally had two soft penalties be absolutely ridiculed on here for not getting overturned, (the two against Wolves by Newcastle and Sheffield Utd) and now that Webb wants them to intervene to change those, you’re still slating them.
Are you really saying “well the refs have been shit the last few weeks, but you can’t tell them to be better otherwise that’s not consistent throughout the season”
If they can’t overturn one’s as blatant as the Wolves one, then this isn’t going to make a difference. There wasn’t anything stopping them from overturning incredibly easy decisions beforehand, this is just to make it look like they are changing something
That’s exactly what I’m saying though, before this change, the VARs were under a directive that if the on-field referee had given a penalty, and if there was any slight contact from the defender, then they weren’t allowed to overturn it. Dale Johnson talked a lot about this in the VAR review at the time. I think the only exception is when they believed the attacking player initiated the contact.
This change in theory, will help with that, and give the VAR more power to step in and prevent things like the Wolves incidents. Whether that’s actually the case, we’ll see.
In theory this is good, but if they start just giving out penalties willy nilly again like they were doing in 2020 (remember Bruno Fernandes got a penalty for almost snapping Konsa’s shin in two lmao?) then it’ll be even more unbearable than it is now with their ridiculously high bar of a clear and obvious error.
Are referees goldfish?
They had this new edict at the start of the season regarding dissent and waving imaginary cards and stuck by it, more or less. Then they forgot about it and have to be reminded about it again?
Look I know punching down at referees is popular. And I think we can all agree they’ve been extra shit this year. But if you’ve ever been a manager or managed a team of people, you’d not be surprised at this one bit. It’s something you’d hope a leader of a team would do; remind the team of their goals as we all can get distracted, not remain as focused as we’d like, and none of us are perfect.
It always happens though, they start the season being better about letting soft challenges go, and booking people for dissent etc. Then the big name managers and the pundits who support those clubs start to complain and the refs back off. I wish they’d just stick to their guns
They also forgot about the new timewasting rules after Tomiyasu got a redcard for it.
Howard Webb, making a mockery of “clear and obvious”
I think people in the game need to get together are really decide what they want with VAR. On the one hand you have people saying it’s a disgrace for a decision to be wrong when you have VAR but then people are also complaining that VAR is used too much and takes to long during the game. The ‘clear and obvious’ thing has brought too much confusion from the start and can’t possibly be applied consistently. This was all one of the major points of debate as VAR was being discussed and years later it is still unresolved and tbh we don’t seem to be progressing towards an agreed way to employ VAR.
