Soccer (Closing)

Completely the wrong idea - how best to tackle the allegations of bias from referees than to hire former players. You can’t make it up…

Can we just have live VAR audio?

Welcome to the team.

Van der Sar

Micha Richards

Vidic

Richard Dunne

Evra

Scholes

Yaya Toure

David Silva

Giggs

Valencia

Rooney and Augero

If listening to pundits has taught me two things it's this:

1. No former players know the actual rules and what is or isn't illegal should be decided by how they feel about it.

2. No former players can overcome their previous team allegiances.

This is an awful idea.

They couldn't find any air traffic controllers, 999 Phone operators, ex RAF Coordinators etc?

People who made a living communicating clearly and effectively under high pressure with high stakes? You know... The exact skills that are useful for a VAR...

The argument has been made for years that ex professionals should be referees as "they know the game".

But that's complete bullshit.

They know a specific position.

Imagine an ex defender becoming a referee, he would have a much high tolerance level for what is a foul than an ex striker would.

Impartiality is imperative to being a referee. Ex pros are not remotely impartial.

Oh sweet, cant wait until referees are 80% former Utd/Liverpool players like the pundits.

Everyone shitting on the idea but i see it as a good start to fix VAR proplems , And simply put a rule of not refereeing club you have played in before and maybe their biggest rival too 😂

Honest to god I find the idea "make ex players refs" to be the most frustrating.

Currently refs get called biased if they lived in the same region as a club. Footballers who've moved into media roles over the years are always showing their biases. They've had decades of tribalism drummed into them, even if they're fine moving clubs they still won't want to tarnish their legacy by giving any decisions that help their rivals.

Even if they do play it straight no fan is going to believe them as fans

Oh great, fast-tracking stuff will definitely solve this issue, that's how you get quality employees, just blast through it all. Also, who the hell would trust that they wouldn't be unbiased??

They've done this a bit in rugby and they tend to be worst refs. Not saying PGMOL have done a good job with a lot of their decisions but the job is so hard to do without mistakes whilst the criticism is so high that even if the quality of onfield reffing improved I don't think people would have confidence.

It's why there should be a focus on improving VAR to make it a streamlined and consistent process which PGMOL and everyone else has made a meal of

Jobs for the boys

what about the refs who are wading through the trenches who come pre experienced and would chomp at the bits for a promotion?

Imagine ronaldo as a ref 😂

PGMOL out of VAR is what needs to happen. All we need is automated offside and a competent VAR to tell the actual official to head to the screen for another look on questionable calls.

Rooney please!

Which United and City players have retired recently?

Should have been done Donkeys years ago

The 12 names have been revealed:

1. Aguero
2. David Silva
3. Vincent Kompany
4. Joleon Lescott
5. Pablo Zabaleta
6. Micah Richards
7. Yaya Toure
8. Samir Nasri
9. Carlos Tevez
10. Aleksandr Kolarov
11. Gael Clichy
12. Josep Guardiola

Ole schemin' PGMOL at it again!

Honestly, Howard Webb is a moron. He’s more interested in being liked than doing a good job.

Last year he decided that VAR decision were going to be faster so we got faster decisions but more wrong decisions as well.

He started this year by making a big deal out of apologising to Wolves for the Onana non-penalty. This was dumb because while it was a bad decision it make it a much bigger deal and I think the increase of managers bitching about VAR is because of it.

Now he’s fast tracking ex-pros because ex-pros have also assumed they would be better referees despite their being zero evidence to back this up.

He’s a disaster.

Fuck Tum Balogun and the mail.

Zlatan can only be the non biased candidate from players haha

Nothing inspires confidence like fast tracking

This is so dumb.