Originally Posted by
JP
While most of you were bleating over the washing line and warning of the impending apocalypse every time a new system was used inefficiently and poorly (game's dead, game's gone mate, game's dying, game's on its last legs, I don't understand the game anymore), the PGMOL were collating these examples and using the mistakes in them to implement a VAR system in the Premier League which relied more on common sense, trusting your colleagues to do their job and a will to keep games flowing.
If the first weekend is anything to go by, they've done a bang up job. Not perfect (I mean, of course it fucking wasn't, it never will be), but if that's what we see every week the artificial moan storm that's been whipped up will fuck off sharpish.
Right, can we all just agree on one thing going forward? Somebody will be offside, of they won't. Either the attacker is ahead of the defender, or he isn't. It makes no difference if a player is offside by a millimeter or a mile (big pitch). For the purposes of the offside law, they essentially mean the same thing. Offside errors almost certainly don't class themselves as clear or obvious, but they are checked for every goal because they have the technology to do so and can you imagine the shitstorm if they weren't using it and goals were being given, or ruled out, incorrectly?
Even implemented in inferior ways, VAR has already had a huge impact on major competitions. England have suffered, Man City too. Poor little babbies, so hard done by with these, let me just see here, that's it, correct decisions that are being made, allowing the game to naturally progress, instead of a refereeing mistake acting as a big fuck off Butterfly in the match and now Big Sam has no face.
It does need to continue improving, and it will. More autonomy will be passed on to the video refs to make calls, referees will catch on that looking at the same angle 15 times only makes you look like a twat so just make a decision, Offside and red card checks sped up. This is important to keep in mind whenever somebody thinks about stepping on that soapbox for a rant, this version of VAR we have now, this is the worst it will ever be from this moment on. It's only going to get better as we learn the best ways to use its benefits while hiding the aspects of it that piss some of you off.
Embrace the future lads. Team Skynet FTW