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Good piece, and every game against them this season has confirmed in my mind, the top 6 get every 50:50 or marginal call their way. It's frankly a joke and an embarrassment to the "best league in the world". Problem is, when you moan it just sounds like sour grapes.
to be honest Bob, I think the professional game (& the money involved) has outgrown the type of officiating required. NFL has 7 on field & amateur American football has gone to 8. I'm not advocating going to those levels but I genuiningly believe that the decisions (all over the pitch) are so crucial, that going to 4 or even 5 on the pitch is necessary. Referee, assistant in each half & lino's, as well as VAR as an absolute fallback.
p.s. the decision accuracy in the NFL is far better than in the PL and the financial value outcomes of the decisions is similar
Someone is arguing the exact same thing on the Feedback section of the blog Des and I tend to agree - I remember the standard of decision making being not too great back in 13/14, but there was certainly nothing to match the Chelsea game and I would say the overall quality has been lower this time around.
Is the bad decision making this year a deliberate attempt to hype VAR?
Good well thought out and written piece that Bob.
Whilst questioning (quite rightly) the officials' stance seemingly contradicting themselves (in the example of being too far away to see/change a decision) you have generally still erred on the side of giving the officials benefit of the doubt.
People can dress it up as they like but it is cheating IMHO.
I made a similar (far less depth) point a couple of weeks ago regarding the big teams/big players getting the big decisions (at every level) and this is something that I don't think will ever change.
The decision maybe not last season but season before where Steelers scored a touchdown, all the pundits said it was a touchdown, all the coaches and players thought it was a touchdown and then the officials to say no, and for NFL have to explain why following day because everyone so bemused, it partly why I can't see VAR fixing all the things it's been said it would fix. We're going to take away the immediate elation or despair only to find out either a) no one really knows the rules or b) the rules are wrong and need to be changed.
I think you're saying what I came here to say though, I can't understand why we persist with one referee assistant on each side of the pitch when this must make so many decisions based on a imperfect visuals. Surely we can have two on each side and a referee before we need to splash out on VAR?
Glad to see you acknowledge the Gunn incident...because the rest of the bad decisions wouldn't have happened if Pawson had acted on that.