Had VAR been around in 91, Phil Kite would never have been penalised for handling outside the area and we might have had a better result against Leeds
Not sure I remember that one!?!
Anyway, in my humble opinion VAR, and the way football is now run at the top end of the game, is a load of bollox.
I love football, but I hate it at the same time, but just can't bring myself to stop being interested, watching especially The Blades. As they say, "It's in yer blood!"
So, after many, many years, the officiating of football was ok and didn't really need much effing about with. The footballing Gods, in their extremely finite wisdom, decided to change the archaic offside rule. The only actual change to this, that should ever had been made, is to abolish it entirely. I have said this to many footy pals and, virtually without exception, they haven't agreed with me. Now I think that it's such an integral part of the game, they cannot bring themselves to take it on board the thought of it not being a thing. (Or maybe I'm trying to internally justify my own opinion!?!) I played field hockey all my life and we abolished off-side completely around 30 years ago. Teams would leave a forward up around, or even in, the 'D', waiting for a break down at the other end of the pitch and for their defence to lash the ball upfront. AS you can imagine, in hockey, you can send a small hard ball from one end of the pitch to the other very quickly. This continued for most of the first half of the season, until teams (especially of a decent standard) realised that they were playing with a man down. This tactic then changed from around the festive break and the game, effectively reverted back to how it had always been played.
Introducing the 'not interfering with play' parameter was a much needed amendment to the rule (I probably agree with this one if we have to continue with it), biut it has often been badly implemented.
However, they then added a level of utter confusion, by not the 'not raising the flag' thing, which is, and was, totally unnecessary.
They we go to VAR. I've said it on here before. Why on earth didn't the Blazer Boys study what works in other sports, namely Rugby (League & Union, Hockey, Cricket and Tennis, being the main ones. It works brilliantly in all these comparable sports, both from an implementation and ongoing viewpoint. In Association Football it doesn't, again in both cases.
Transparency, appeal systems, (including limited number of appeals, losing number of appeals when unsuccessful), informative to the live audience, are all areas that the football authorities have, if indeed they did look at and consider before introduction, they have completely ignored. The bigger question for me is, "Why?"
Rant over, back to sleep.
