***Official*** English Football Season 2019-20

[Spark]

DRS works in cricket and tennis because there's a natural stop-start flow in play, with natural breaks that it just slots into. Having to wait five minutes to work out whether you can celebrate your team scoring a late winner or not just seems, well, literal anti-football, which is all about the flow I thought.

There's definitely some areas where it makes sense though. Offsides and foul play off the ball for sure IMO.

 

[GIMH]

Goal line tech was the only one worth bringing in IMO

 

[Spark]

Goal line tech was the only one worth bringing in IMO

Wonder if there's a way to automate offsides somehow. Probably not without changing the law.

 

[vcs]

DRS works in cricket and tennis because there's a natural stop-start flow in play, with natural breaks that it just slots into. Having to wait five minutes to work out whether you can celebrate your team scoring a late winner or not just seems, well, literal anti-football, which is all about the flow I thought.

There's definitely some areas where it makes sense though. Offsides and foul play off the ball for sure IMO.

Football also has a lot of systematic foul-play kind of built into it, which falls under the general umbrella of "gamesmanship" that people seem to accept. Hounding the referee, systematic fouling, shirt-pulling, diving, over-appealing for handballs, throw-ins, corners etc. Definitely much more than cricket or tennis. With all that being accepted, it feels a bit jarring for them to be overly pedantic about accidental handballs, offsides by millimeters etc. and taking minutes to resolve those incidents while killing the best moments in the process, i.e. the emotion of scoring a late winner.

 

[Cabinet96]

Agree wholeheartedly with Sledger about the managers thing. Obviously you want as big a sample as possible to judge a manager on in general, but sometimes you can just see early that the appointment isn't going to work out for whatever reason, at which point you don't gain anything by keeping them around just to appease people who care about fairness. A lot of the worst decisions by sporting institutions are done because they're worried about looking bad.

Also, there really isn't that many examples where managers were on the brink of the sack, clung on, and managed to build a successful project afterwards. Obviously there are some (I think Fergie is the one people always cite, I don't know how close to the sack he actually was), but the vast majority of times when clubs hold if, it's just delaying the inevitable.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

There aren't many examples of where clubs have held on at all, never mind going on to achieve anything. Sometimes the people making the appointments in the first place need to look at themselves if the appointments are so bad.
The word "project" is the lamest addition to the football vocabulary ever. You have to win quickly or you're out.

 

[Cabinet96]

Don't agree there. You could tell for example that in 15/16 Klopp was improving Liverpool and creating something that could be successful down the line. With Sarri at Chelsea last season it just wasn't the case. There's much more to evaluating a manager than results.

 

[sledger]

There aren't many examples of where clubs have held on at all, never mind going on to achieve anything. Sometimes the people making the appointments in the first place need to look at themselves if the appointments are so bad.
The word "project" is the lamest addition to the football vocabulary ever. You have to win quickly or you're out.

Yeah the people calling the shots should take some of the flack if their decisions are arse, but that shouldn't preclude them from trying to change course once a balls up has been identified.

 

[sledger]

RE: VAR, I've actually really enjoyed how it's been used tbh. Big fan.

 

[Pothas]

Agree wholeheartedly with Sledger about the managers thing. Obviously you want as big a sample as possible to judge a manager on in general, but sometimes you can just see early that the appointment isn't going to work out for whatever reason, at which point you don't gain anything by keeping them around just to appease people who care about fairness. A lot of the worst decisions by sporting institutions are done because they're worried about looking bad.

Also, there really isn't that many examples where managers were on the brink of the sack, clung on, and managed to build a successful project afterwards. Obviously there are some (I think Fergie is the one people always cite, I don't know how close to the sack he actually was), but the vast majority of times when clubs hold if, it's just delaying the inevitable.

Brentford with Dijkhuizen is a classic example of this. We had already gone through Warburton thing so sacking the new guy straight away was going to look really bad but they knew it had to be done and did not hesitate to do so. Last season Frank hardly won a game for the first couple of months after he took over but there was never even the slightest chance that he was going to get the sack.

The Huddersfield thing is still a bit strange, I mean he had been there for half a season so the decision should really have been made in the summer. Does not make it the wrong one now of course.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Newcastle away to Spurs next week. That could be Bruce on his way.

 

[Pothas]

Goal line tech was the only one worth bringing in IMO

Yep. As Spark says if there was some way of automating offside then fine but apart from that would not want to see anything else, even if it was done well. The upsides of VAR just don't come close to making up for the downsides for me. I guess it comes down to how much you really care about getting the 'right' decision.

 

[Pothas]

The handball thing is obviously ridiculous of course.

 

[Cabinet96]

Who was the Arsenal midfielder who just stood still when the Burnley winger went inside for the goal? One of the most village things I've seen in the PL in years. At my level you'd probably get hooked at that.

Not sure what you mean? If you're talking about Ceballos he ran back about 60 yards then got admittedly easily dribbled past but he was kind of flat on his feet.

 

[sledger]

Yep. As Spark says if there was some way of automating offside then fine but apart from that would not want to see anything else, even if it was done well. The upsides of VAR just don't come close to making up for the downsides for me. I guess it comes down to how much you really care about getting the 'right' decision.

For some reason I've found it much less intrusive and interrupting than I thought I would. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps this aspect of it has been a bit "overhyped" for me, so to speak.

I think, like I said a while ago, when watching on TV having the game broken up for the same of a VAR decision feels no different to me personally than being shown the endless replays of contentious events that would happen anyway. Granted I am sure it feels a bit different when actually at the match.

At the same time, I think I probably place more importance on the value of procedural propriety than most, so that probably explains my outlook on it.

 

[Pothas]

I think the goal thing is a personal thing, it really bothers me. I don't see how the game is an anyway improved by what happened to City today.

There are bound to be other times when an obviously wrong decision is overturned in which case it is being improved I suppose, but I just don't care enough about bad decisions for it to be worth it overall.

 

[Cabinet96]

Tbh the City one today was obviously rubbish because the current interpretation of handball sucks. People are literally being punished for having arms attached to their body.

@Pothas, do you feel the same way about DRS in cricket? I get that cricket is a slower sport with regular breaks in play which is more suited to reviews. But your issue, which is the main one for many, seems to be that you don't like the idea of celebrating a goal then having it chalked off? In that respect it's not really different to cricket. Were you similarly aggrieved with DRS when Smith was given out LBW to Broad at Edgbaston then had it overturned? It's basically the same as a goal in terms of importance, spur of the moment celebration, and then getting overturned.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

I think I probably place more importance on the value of procedural propriety than most

I’ve always said that’s what separates you from the rest of us.

 

[Pothas]

It is far from the only issue and as you say there are many reasons that cricket is better suited to it than football (it is a series of self contained events etc) but it is a fair point that the celebration thing is objectively the same, it just does not feel the same way to me. I guess the way I treat the sports is just so different, I would say that a goal is more momentous than a wicket but getting Smith out is obviously as big a moment as any goal. Maybe I am just not used to it in Football but then I can't really remember it ever bothering me all that much in cricket. Basically I can't explain why, it just feels different.

 

[sledger]

I’ve always said that’s what separates you from the rest of us.

That and the fact that I am banned from entering several baltic countries.