To compound our misery as Hammers fans, we have the knowledge that for the first half, anyway, our Irons attack of Summerville, Bowen and Kudus gave The Blues plenty to think about. On another day it could have been 2-2 at half time, which I think some who are calling for Lopetegui’s head need to remember.
Mohammed Kudus had the ball in the net before half time, although about half a yard offside it was encouraging after so few chances had been made in previous outings, especially with this new ‘fast and furious’ three up front formation which I’m still convinced was the only good thing to come out of the day.
Cyrencio Summerville was pulled back, that we know, and to everyone except referee Sam Barrott it was an obvious foul which should have been punished by a penalty. Why on earth VAR re-wrote the rules to support the man in black is something which needs continual pressure put on the officialdom at Premier League HQ as- either there is a pull back or there isn’t: ‘Fleeting’ has nothing to do with it.
‘The penalty that never was’
Sky Sports on their Monday ‘Ref Watch” have made their pronouncement with former PL referee Dermot Gallagher on a whole host of incidents from this weekends matches, and I’d been waiting to see Gallagher’s opinion on the Summerville – Chelsea incident.
Gallagher states “I think it’s a penalty. He holds him so long. It starts outside the penalty area. He holds him, he holds him, he holds him. It’s gone on too long.
The dilemma for the VAR is the referee has the perfect view and says no. I think in this case it is ‘the referee’s call’.’
So, that’s as clear as mud then. Yes it’s a penalty. But it’s ‘referees call’ because he has a perfect view. So it’s not a penalty.
Work that one out then. Nonsense. Do away with the whole charade and go back to one man in the middle of the pitch. At least we’d all understand that.
It is more far reaching than being a West Ham fan carping on about a loss. The game has long gone.
But this will be repeated over and over again. Whoever decided to introduce cricket-style ‘referees call’ doesn’t understand that in cricket, there is zero interpretation – either the computer and audio visual aids indicate ‘out’ or ‘not out’: This football ‘half way house’ asks the VAR to interpret the images and decide if the referee made a mistake. They’ll always back the man in the middle, then, so what is the point?
The repeating problem with VAR is that it doesn’t look at what actually happened and decide on that, it looks at what happened and decides on what the ref has done.
It has the seniority the wrong way around, the ref in the studio should be senior as he has repeatable, slow-mo, nigh on always better views from more angles.
The ref on the field should manage the game but once it goes to VAR the ref in the studio decides on what has actually happened.
I think John’s right. VAR should only intervene if the referee on the pitch has got it wrong/missed something, and this clearly needs to be rectified. Then the studio ref makes the decision.
From what I remember, the ref was directly behind so did not have a good view of the arm being held so VAR should have taken that into account.