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Plenty of media outlets and pundits on Amazon last night have come out and said it's ridiculous that a penalty is awarded for that. Part of the problem is also the number of fans who only see injustices against them and ignore similar decisions against the 'big' clubs due to their belief in big team bias. That all goes into the online echo chamber were seemingly every single club in the land is the victim of a PL/UEFA campaign against them.
Part of the reason we don't get many penalties is our very low possession stat. You need to have the ball in the oppositions area to get a penalty, we're not doing that as much as a lot of other clubs. There may well also be an element of plain bad luck in getting the wrong end of contentious decisions. I can't pluck any real howlers off the top of my head but I've no doubt someone else here could - that's more me and my memory than a firm idea of things.
The law is currently very silly as it is trying to micromanage decisions in order to push consistency to an impossible degree in a fast moving sport with a huge number of different factors in play at any one time. But it seems like it has to do that due to the media obsession with perpetrating people screaming like babies over even slightly contentious decisions.
carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
Ya know what solves that problem? Competence from referees and their bosses. The standard of officiating in the premier league is worse than that of MLS, nevermind the other big leagues around the world. Watch a Bundesliga or serie A match. Sure they’re not perfect but you’re very rarely unable to see their reasoning. So many decisions in the prem are made incorrectly at worst and inconsistently at best, it’s not surprising the amount of theories thrown about.
To be fair he is being asked whether VAR is gonna overturn those decisions or if Utd are gonna get an apology. He's quite clearly explaining that as the laws stands VAR can't really overturn them as they're both valid decisions as the laws are written. At no point is he saying those are fine examples of just how good the laws of the game are being defined and enforced.
In fact he states that as the laws get more and more in depth, or drill down, to provide 'definitive' rules it just creates more problems. But people just want to scream "LOOK HES DEFENDING IT" rather than listen to what he's saying.
Lloydaldo11
Player Valuation: £1.5m
Why would anyone trust the word of Gallagher. He was an absolute horror of a ref up there with Mike Riley and that fat toad who we always got for the derby when we were going in off the back of a string of good results
lieneverton
Player Valuation: £8m
Unpopular opinion no doubt but this was little to do with any corruption imo. The law is a disgrace and Tyldesley quite openly criticised it at the time on commentary, but rightly accepted it was likely to get given under the current nonsense rules.
Is the fact City players kicked off and screamed at the ref evidence of corruption? Not really, it just proves they're little brats, but it's the sort of behaviour you expect from most footballers nowadays.
We'd be livid if this wasn't given the other way. Whether it would have been is debatable, of course, but we'll never know.
We've been royally effed over this season many times, and in one very obvious elephant-in-the-room way. But this wasn't one. This was about a disgraceful handball rule which, as the comms said last night, is not fit for purpose.
Is the fact City players kicked off and screamed at the ref evidence of corruption? Not really, it just proves they're little brats, but it's the sort of behaviour you expect from most footballers nowadays.
We'd be livid if this wasn't given the other way. Whether it would have been is debatable, of course, but we'll never know.
We've been royally effed over this season many times, and in one very obvious elephant-in-the-room way. But this wasn't one. This was about a disgraceful handball rule which, as the comms said last night, is not fit for purpose.
Bigduke1234
Player Valuation: £10m
He is defending it, just doing it like a weasel
No. What helps minimise the problem is a simplification of the laws of the game at IFAB level and placing a degree of trust in officials to take each incident as it comes and within the context of what is happening around it.
You are never going to 'solve' the problem of bad decisions.
Firstly because there are a huge number of people who don't actually know what they're talking about in terms of the actual laws of the game who are always going to see terrible decisions where it's actually contentious at worst and furthermore you can't remove bias, be it purposeful or subconscious. And secondly because people are always going to have bad days at the office.
Cameron Manning
Player Valuation: £35m
Those penalties didn’t do us a lot of good- we never won one of those games like the two we scored the season before losing to Burnley 3-2 after Richarlison‘s two penalties.
Ring master
Player Valuation: £90m
The last pens we scored that did come in a win - both 2-0
Lewin away v Brighton - Aug 2021
Townsend home v Norwich - Sep 2021
carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
The biggest and most influential league in the world should have better officials. Zero clue how that’s a controversial statement for you. The standard is shocking.
I agree with a lot of what you say and a lot of fair points.
But I absolutely believe there is big team bias in this league and I see it pretty much every week. I think VAR is making it a far bigger issue than it used to be.
Of course decisions go against the top sides but it's pretty much when they play each other, not against teams like Everton. The two howlers I can remember Liverpool getting this season both came against top 6 sides - Spurs and Arsenal.
kenada_blue
Welcome to Barcelonaton FC
Not really. He's openly saying the one last night is a "modern handball" penalty where weeks ago for pretty much the same incident he's saying they player is "too close" for it to be given.
Gallagher isn't even a ref anymore or on any official panal of referees, so he just gets wheeled out on shows to defend his mates. You can't have 2 separate opposite decisions be 'valid' for the same thing.
VAR has made the whole thing even worse as they've basically spent millions not to improve the game or add consistency but to re-enforce the opinion of 1 official (mainly the one at Stockley Park). And his opinion is going to differ from another opinion each week as the rules are open to interpretation.
It's probably the mentality us fans need to take. That every single official is going to have a different opinion to decisions each game. So the exact same incident one week won't be judged the same the next.
VAR was apparently supposed to change that.
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carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
The Spurs one is such a misnomer as well. The referee was literally trying to award the decision Liverpools way and was just so incompetent that he got it backwards.
I agree with your points, but there can't ever be exactly the same incident twice. It makes sense that similar incidents might in one case be illegal and one case legal if both borderline. I don't think you can avoid it.
As @ToffeeTim says above though, there certainly is a big club bias. There is definitely pressure on the refs and the VARs to go with the decisions which benefit those sides, because if they don't they get absolutely hammered. They probably don't even know they're doing it a lot of the time.
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