A&H

Handball in the Prem League

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I've said all along that the PGMOL will do a much better job with VAR because they listen to the Clubs, players, managers and fans and hear what we're saying. There will be some on here who will be outraged by the possibility that the VAR protocol is bent to the limit, but given that the Laws are so loosely applied, I don't see what the problem is
That said, stating that the HB interpretation won't change from that of the last few is interesting. That can't be literally true, I'm sure
 
"The way we've actually implemented handball for the past two or three seasons is the way we are going to continue to do it in the future."
That's a very strange statement, given that the law has *explicitly* changed this season. What other changes in the law are we going to be ignoring?
 
While FIFA are more or less implementing VAR in a way to give the referee a second go at just about every KMI decision, it sounds like EPL are going the opposite way and not intervene even when they should. Will VAR only be a wobbly line offside detector in EPL? Time will tell.
Someone will eventually get it right.... hopefully this century.
 
While FIFA are more or less implementing VAR in a way to give the referee a second go at just about every KMI decision, it sounds like EPL are going the opposite way and not intervene even when they should. Will VAR only be a wobbly line offside detector in EPL? Time will tell.
Someone will eventually get it right.... hopefully this century.
Contrary to all the noise I make, I'm not anti-VAR as such. I just vehemently protest at the break-neck pace at which its been introduced, whilst always mistrusting FIFA's motivations. Any intention by the PGMOL to reign things back as much as possible will be welcomed by the majority here in the UK. Doing so will give the officials breathing space to assess the protocol and set precedents which FIFA will have difficulty swallowing. I'd argue that the UK has the best pools of referees in the world and I'm backing them to improve on the farce we've seen so far (albeit I'll still hold strong reservations)
 
I hope you are right. Not convincing with it in FA Cup games last season but they were introductory games. As I said, time will tell.
 
Riley also said the handball in the CL Final wouldn't be called in England which is just crazy. That would actually be ignoring the new LOTG and not just coming up with creative interpretations.
 
I just vehemently protest at the break-neck pace at which its been introduced, whilst always mistrusting FIFA's motivations.
If this is your idea of "break-neck pace" I'd hate to know what you consider slow. It's been tested for several years at increasing breadth and level of play, and is now going through its full trials.
I'd argue that the UK has the best pools of referees in the world and I'm backing them to improve on the farce we've seen so far (albeit I'll still hold strong reservations)
It being a system that much of the world has only really seen in a small number of competitions, and based on the experience of pretty much every other sport that has introduced VAR-like or equivalent systems in the past 15 years, the only thing that will improve the system is time and opportunity, to identify all the edges and ambiguities that can only be found when you move from a sample of tens to a sample of hundreds and eventually thousands, and make the changes that fix them without adding worse problems.
Having a better pool of referees won't improve the system that is, if they're going to ignore and go do their own thing that loosely resembles it.
 
It's been tested for several years at increasing breadth and level of play, and is now going through its full trials.
VAR is not going through any kind of trials. It's a totally and completely official part of the Laws of the Game and has been since 2018.
 
VAR is not going through any kind of trials. It's a totally and completely official part of the Laws of the Game and has been since 2018.
That's what the "full trial" of a system is - the real world with everybody and everything that can and does break it.
 
No it's not - a trial is when something is being tried out in a limited number of selected competitions where specific authorisation had been granted by the IFAB to use something that is NOT part of the Laws of the Game. Once something is in the laws, it is by definition, no longer a trial.

Just to take an extreme example to illustrate the point, the law on a deliberate kick to the goalkeeper was introduced in 1992 after being trialled in earlier competitions. The IFAB has never announced that this is not still an experiment. Is it still going through trials? And if not, why not?
 
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No it's not - a trial is when something is being tried out in a limited number of selected competitions where specific authorisation had been granted by the IFAB to use something that is NOT part of the Laws of the Game. Once something is in the laws, it is by definition, no longer a trial.
What you describe is an experiment more than a trial. VAR has gone from the former to the latter, in the real sense if not the official.
Just to take an extreme example to illustrate the point, the law on a deliberate kick to the goalkeeper was introduced in 1992 after being trialled in earlier competitions. The IFAB has never announced that this is not still an experiment. Is it still going through trials? And if not, why not?
To the extent that we haven't quite found the exact line between what is and isn't, yes, it's still under trial. To the extent that we've found the law very useful in promoting positive play and narrowed that line right down to a wire, I'd call it a successful trial, so the only difference now is the rubber stamp.
 
To the extent that we haven't quite found the exact line between what is and isn't, yes, it's still under trial. To the extent that we've found the law very useful in promoting positive play and narrowed that line right down to a wire, I'd call it a successful trial, so the only difference now is the rubber stamp.
So according to you, the law on a deliberate kick to the keeper is still under trial and we're just waiting for the IFAB to officially approve it?

Alrighty then.
 
What you describe is an experiment more than a trial.
Experiments and trials (and even tests) are the same thing. FIFA and the IFAB use the terms interchangeably. See extracts below from a FIFA article about VAR:

Live experiments will only begin once all participants have had time to complete the preparations, which is not expected before the beginning of 2017.
[...]

Once The IFAB gives the green light for live tests to go ahead, each competition organiser can decide exactly when they will start in their respective events with the live trials.

VAR experiments/trials announced
 
So according to you, the law on a deliberate kick to the keeper is still under trial and we're just waiting for the IFAB to officially approve it?

Alrighty then.
In the sense that they (according to someone) haven't officially Taken It Off Trial™, apparently it's still on trial.
For me, law is law, whether it's new or old, time-tested or otherwise.
 
Pilot, proof of concept, beta run, try out and a few more. They are all there and they serve the purpose of giving a fail or success outcome. The latter means adoption of the concept while the former means abandoning it. I don't see an option of abandoning VAR. It's already adopted.

This from 18/19 pretty much means testing/experiment/trial over, the real thing is on... "inclusion", and "after rigorous testing" .

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