Sheffield United (h); The Review

Random star performer

For the first 45 minutes, this was an excellent City performance. The sponsors champagne went to Alex Tettey and reasonably so, but his midfield partner Mario Vrancic looked every inch the Premier League midfielder that Jon Punt made outrageous predictions about.

Let’s say this early on, for the avoidance of all doubt. We played well first half. Second half we did not and Sheffield United deserved to come back into the game. The way the game unfolded however, regardless of the result, was the final straw for me.

Moment of the match

It’s not one moment, but three of them, which in the combined 15 minutes or so they took to resolve dissolved years of love for the game. Fuck VAR.

First our goal, a decision in which VAR ruled in our favour. If you could bottle the feeling of your team scoring a big goal, in a big game and allow non-football fans a single hit of that pure, unadulterated joy, then they too would become fans for life.

That feeling, those 20 or 30 seconds of screaming carnage, tops any drug. Sure, joys such as the birth of a child, or marrying your person provide unmeasurable happiness, but those are longer, more drawn-out, deeper. A goal is a single explosion. A firework of joy, which can’t be compared to the longer-term bonfire of contentment that is found in other walks of life, and which VAR has stolen from us all.

Now, instead of a huge outpouring when the ball hits the net, you have a mild whoop, followed by a joy-sapping lull of 2 or 3 minutes while a referee stands motionless, one finger to an ear, awaiting confirmation from an unseen arbitrator 100 miles away.

“Goal confirmed”, says a disembodied voice (this is nothing against you Dan Wynne, it could be any voice…). Yay.

Then their ‘goal’. Another decision which went in our favour, but which, if twitter is to be believed, almost led to a mass walk-out. Passes zip around our box, two players come together, tumbling over in the box, the assistant’s flag goes up, the referee blows his whistle, the players all stop and someone smashes the ball into the net to ironic cheers. Tim Krul retrieves the ball, ready to resume the game and suddenly the man in black is stood motionless again. Why? What is VAR checking? Was is a penalty? It didn’t look like a penalty. Was it something else, something off the ball?

“VAR is checking for a goal” says that same voice. You what? A goal? For why? Now, I know the official reason is that they were checking to see if their player was really offside, because if he wasn’t, then the goal should have counted.

BUT; if the ref hadn’t blown for offside, the players wouldn’t have stopped and the ‘goal’ may not have been scored. This is the crux of the matter for me. VAR is changing the game but in arbitrary ways which are destroying the game and rendering referees obsolete, because the decisions which are being reviewed are chosen purely on the basis of what happens next.

That in turn also means referees aren’t making the decisions they used to, which further changes the game. Now, if there is a borderline offside, the assistant tends not to give it in case it leads to a goal, whereby it would be reviewed. But what about all those other times, the vast majority, where a team pushes up and catches someone offside, but it doesn’t lead to a goal. The problem there is that whereas before a defending team would have had a free kick, they are now forced to play on and, likely, continue defending. What happens if a player is offside, but the assistant doesn’t give it, relying on VAR to overturn it if there is a goal, but instead the defender recovers, makes the tackle and concedes a corner. The offside isn’t reviewed then and now the attacking team have a corner. If they score from that, the offside that led to the corner isn’t reviewed, so have gained an unfair advantage.

It’s not just offsides, but all decisions are affected in this way and it is no longer equal. Ball hits an attacking players hand and no goal can be scored (by that team) until the next break in play, nor is the referee likely to blow for a foul. However, they can play on, win a corner or free-kick etc and score from that. It’s nonsense.

This is all without touching on the ridiculous nature of ruling out any goal in which a player’s toenail, or armpit is millimetres offside when the TV screen pauses it. Adam Shafiq has done the maths on this and found that because of the speed players move, combined with the frame rate of modern TV cameras, we can never be 100% sure a player is on or offside. Here he calculates how Heung-Min Son was 67% onside, 33% offside for his ruled-out goal, vs Leicester earlier this season, a goal which would have put Spurs 2-0 ahead, in a game they ultimately lost. A few weeks later Poch loses his job… So much for VAR ensuring fairness.

Finally, the red card. Is that really a “clear and obvious error” by the referee? It took 5 minutes to decide, which is a big clue it’s not clear or obvious. It looked a red card challenge, both in real-time and on the replays. Yes, you could argue, as we did in the stands, that Basham had every right to go for the ball and it was late rather than malicious, but a red was perfectly justified. Had VAR not intervened; would the FA have overturned a ban for that type of challenge? No. Would Sheffield United have even bothered appealing it? Probably not.

Although all of that moves away from the point, which is that even when VAR gets decisions right, the price is too high, because the price is a game robbed of its emotion. Much of the TV punditry is focussed on whether VAR is right or wrong, but that doesn’t really matter. The fact that it’s not 100% right is proof enough, that its implementation has been cack-handed, but that’s not the point.

Incorrect decisions used to make me angry, but at least I felt something. Now everything just leaves me cold, disconnected and apathetic, because in searching for 100% accuracy, we have lost the joy. Fuck VAR.

Farke watch

Refreshing the team worked for the first 45, and he must be as exasperated as anyone that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

Subs were made early and they affected the game, especially Cantwell, who almost snatched a point, but by then VARs interventions had rendered me unmoved.

Weekend moan

See above. I love football, but I’m done.

Atmosphere rating

See above. VAR has killed it. I love football, but I’m done.

Summary

Well done Sheffield United, I genuinely hope you stay up.

Fuck VAR.