Its Coming.

Last august everybody was frightened to death to criticise var,but as the season went on opinions changed and if truth be told if most players had their way it would be scrapped.Now we have the same thing about the null and void scenario.Nobody dare say it. It needs one statement,if we are not playing football by the end of july the 2019/2020 season is over.Too many reasons to explain why.

 

I don't think many people's opinions of var changed. People disliked it long before the season started

 

Don't players' contracts end on the 30th of June?

 

Imho....VAR a very good tool/ idea.....done badly.

 

My opinion changed, I thought it was a good idea because I’m used to watching it enhance the game in cricket. Then I quickly changed when I saw what an absolute shambles they’d made of it in the Prem.

 

Didn't you see how it operated in the women's world cup and in trial matches last year?

 

They do need to start thinking about deadlines. Would've thought it would be possible for economic assessments to be done to gauge which point in time it becomes costlier to finish the season that it would be to cancel it.

 

4k more deaths officially than the number that gets announced daily and that's in just one week. It's about time the EFL grew a set and made the season null and void.

 

I agree, cricket had similar problems when they introduced technology which fundamentally changed the game (most notably with regard to spin bowlers, who started getting LBW decisions when previously the umpire would have given not out because the batsman had come so far forward). It took cricket a few years to sort it out and have come out with a sensible system. I don't see why football can't follow a similar scheme whereby each team has a number of appeals against what they feel are bad decisions. The biggest problem in football though is that many decisions are ultimately based on subjective opinions, for example fouls. The referee at Old Trafford in 1998 clearly being of the opinion that he could only give a penalty if Andy Liddle had actually had his leg amputated.

 

Cricket benefits from taking place in discrete 'chunks' of time though, with pauses in between, which lends itself very well to appeals like that.

Personally, I can't think of a way of incorporating VAR sensibly into football, and reckon they should have stopped with goal-line technology. I doubt this cat's going back into the bag any time soon though.

 

Didn't really watch women's world cup it doesn't interest me to be honest. I did watch the men's world cup and thought it worked pretty well there, I was sceptical before then but thought they generally pulled it off. The PL then made a right **** up of implementing it properly.

 

Cricket did have teething issues, but nothing like what we've seen with football.

 

Said it a long time. The season will not start up again. Sooner EFL/ Owners acept the severity of the crisis and move on the better. The line of least resistance is restructuring with Leeds and West Brom promoted and 22 in the PL next year. Do Barnsley deserve to stay up? Absolutely not. However, should there be relegation from the Championship I fully expect that the trio of Birmingham, Derby and Wednesday should go first.

 

I think Russia was an exception unfortunately, it wasnt all plain sailing before then by any means. Trials in Serie A and Bundesliga brought their own inevitable issues and many were calling to scrap it. Italy has now accepted it but has gone too far, now wanting to implement a 'challenge' rule whereby the game can be stopped and a referee's final decision challenged using VAR. This would put the power in players' hands, it would I imagine incite pandemonium and confusion (who decides what 'challenges' are allowed to be challenged, for example?), and the integrity of the ref would fall into disrepute. The FA seem to be of the 'well it's here to stay so deal with it' etc, but how far will they take it? If you had the challenge rule you may as well take the ref off the pitch and just having him sat on a high chair like in tennis observing from the side. You could maybe have the stadium tannoy barking final decisions at the players on the pitch, made by a group of people in a control room in a different part of the country with no emotional attachment to proceedings on the pitch.

 

Agreed, but the issues in the Premier League existed in other leagues before Russia, that was my point. It's not a problem unique to the PL, and it's no wonder fans, pundits, players and managers in the PL and other leagues in Europe are up in arms about it. I think you highlight a very good point, it's a great tool if used correctly, but it's so inconsistent that I fear Russia will remain an isolated case, and that the lesser of two evils is to leave the refereeing down to the matchday officials and keep some natural excitement and adrenaline in the game.

 

I fail to get the argument as to why leeds and west Brom get promoted and we dont get relegated.

 

Self interest. Its what's driving most people's opinions

 

Null and void or finish the season are the only 2 credible solutions. My preference is to add points from this season onto next so we are appropriately disadvantaged and leeds / west brom have their same advantage.