Few will need reminding of the wretched refereeing decisions on Friday night which combined with an equally wretched West Ham team performance to allow another two points to disappear down the river. Another draw, another two points lost.
The Hammers’ automatic promotion prospects look tougher with every point surrendered. Unbeaten in seven league games sounds fine – but three draws within those seven means six points lost.
Tomas Soucek’s brilliant recovery tackle (recovering from his own mistake, it has to be said) actually drew applause for the Hammers crowd before referee Ruebyn Ricardo inexplicably pointed to the spot – dumbfounding Soucek and surprising every QPR player, none of whom had appealed after the challenge.
What the actual….
Now of course West Ham have to take the rough with the smooth and should just have dusted themselves down and grown even more determined to stick three goals past their opponents – instead of remaining in their shells until too late to affect the outcome of the game.
Described as the ‘worst refereeing mistake ever’ in the Championship, the error might yet serve as a catalyst for change, according to Mark Clattenberg, who claims there’s an opportunity for a simplified version of video assistant available – call it ‘VAR lite’ – which would simply draw the official’s attention to a possible mistake and invite him to review himself. (UK Yahoo Sports):
“…there’s a cheaper option where there’s just an operator.
“An operator informs the referee that there could be an issue and the referee has a look at it and makes his final decision. There are systems in place and there are cheaper options if the clubs are thinking it’s a financial issue.
“But they’re spending a lot of money on players and they now should have the technology because that was a huge mistake.”
Worth investigating? Why not.
But as one who has enjoyed a VAR-free spectacle taking place week after week in the second division this season, it’d take a lot to convince me ( and most fans, I suspect) that anything like the Premier League VAR’s incessant intervention to interfere with, and overturn fundamentally sound decisions owing to minuscule transgressions at the other end of the pitch would be seen as progress -nor would it be welcomed in the Championship.
Offside needs to be easier decided whole body not elbows, finger nails, toe nails or any other insignificant part.
Eliminating long drawn out discussions and easy recognised.
Verification of all penalty decisions alone could be possible. No checking to see if any transgressions occurred before ‘the event’. No awarding of penalties retrospectively.
However, any more intervention will interrupt the game and just destroy any sponteneity we have left. Otherwise it is full VAR or nothing.
COYI
Maybe the cricket idea adapted could work. Give each team 2 VAR appeals, if an appeal is rejected they lose it, but if it is a correct call then the team retains the review. However, whichever way it’s done it still means your celebration of a goal is compromised by an appeal. Personally I am happy to continue with just refereeing mistakes, at least you can blame the official for a bad result!
I think the simplest and easiest option would be to review every penalty decision, and every borderline red card only.
These tend to be the most contentious and game changing incidents.
Penalty, no penalty and yellow card for trying to cheat the Ref, if the case.
Red card, some are borderline, and looking at the incident again takes the heat out of the situation and properly consider intent, danger and what action to take.
Offside by a toenail or chin whiskers got boring, so leave that as it is with the Linesman and Ref.
Maybe could limit VAR-lite to only double-check penalty decisions in the background, leave the rest of the game to flow without intervention since this is part of the pleasure of football.
Var-lite does not intervene for example to pick out a foul in the penalty area which the referee has not spotted. Only intervene after game has stopped because ref has blown for a penalty, as it is such an important decision in a game. Leave it at that.