Each to own, as ever. When I go out to officiate, or watch a game, I want the correct calls to be made. I care not if (ideally) the referee gets the call, or he gets direction from AR, 4th, or in this case, a man in a truck.
If we are going to sit through 8 week class, countless mentors, monthly meetings, endless practise clips and so on, the least we can expect is to make the correct call at our game. Fans? Nobody cares. (for now, as things stand)
Tv and sponsors call the shots and wait till (i think is as in Australia) Mcdonalds sponsor the var delay break.
I wish fans mattered. Of course, I am one too. Regardless though of whether I go to Ibrox next week or not, the game goes ahead...
You are a fraud.
"I want the correct calls to be made". You are probably the guy in my gym who reports other members for lifting too heavy or making a small grunt.
If the game could referee itself by some sort of magic and every call be correct in normal decision making time by a referee, then brilliant. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I'm a firm believer that those who are behind VAR in its current format are people who aren't emotionally invested in the game as a player, coach or "football loving" referee. It's smacks of the "everyone's a winner generation" or "everything has to be correct". I mean, you want every decision to be correct and as a result fundamentally changing the game so every decision can be correct in a game that you've ruined by bringing in VAR as we've seen? Why not just create a new sport and make up your own rules? And then you have the fans. The spotty teenagers who say "but if you don't want VAR, what if your team concedes a "wrongly" called penalty and you get relegated". Well my friend, football and league positions are a result of thousands of tiny small decisions and incidents that can affect the outcome. What's that, oh, you want VAR because you think it's going to help your team? Ridiculous. If you get relegated because of a 'bad call", I'd first look at what put you in that position in the first place.
As a player, I've been on the end of a harsh decision, sometimes it costs you, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it ignites a fire and you rally and make up for it, other times you lose a game, other times you get out with a draw thinking "we got lucky there lads". It's football, it's life. And actually, I have a feeling the really strong advocates of VAR are the Twitter nerds who don't actually go to games and want every decision to be correct because they feel that their team is always getting dodgy calls. You know, I've been to games where the fans are absolutely mental, sometimes the decision is correct, sometimes not, they shout and boo, then two hours after the game it's forgotten. What happens when you're striker misses a golden chance which he should have scored that costs you the FA Cup? Should you bring the game back or put robots on the pitch. This isn't a computer game, and that's what makes it great.
As it stands, most pundits are very weary about saying anything negative. Good on Pardew and Howe for calling it out. Good on Shearer. I've seen a number of low profile pro players on Twitter say it's no good, like Hogan Ephraim and Josh Windass and a lad who plays for Notts Forest.
Pick VAR up and stick in a bin. Bring in officials behind the goal, make the fourth official a little more involved. And if you feel you get a bad decision against you, you are allowed to react, you are allowed to moan within reason and then you move on. If the decision is wrong and it's acceptable which the majority are, then there is no issue. If it's a glaring error by the ref then it needs to be addressed by the relevant body.
VAR in it's correct format makes the game much much worse at the expense of potentially getting the odd decision correct.
