VAR using Ex Pros

[TexasAndy]

There's has been talk for a long time about using ex players as part of the VAR decision making process but are we really going to get genuine decisions with the likes of Lennon and Boyd making calls?

[kingantti1874]

Just now, TexasAndy said:

There's has been talk for a long time about using ex players as part of the VAR decision making process but are we really going to get genuine decisions with the likes of Lennon and Boyd making calls?

lol. Can you imagine.  

[meister]

It would be an absolute nightmare !! Can you imagine the conspiracy theories, digging back into a players history and school they attended to determine which part of the OF they would favour ??

 

The only way it might, MIGHT, work is if we used players from down south and vice versa for helping with VAR.

[Byyy The Light]

Most of the pundits we watch every week don’t know the rules. Some of their comments on a weekly basis are laughable.

 

I’d much rather they used ex referees who are no longer fit enough to get around the pitch.
 

Ideally foreign ones who can work from home as the cost argument for flying them over doesn’t come in to it these days. 

[meister]

"Welcome to Tynecastle for the Edinburgh Derby under the lights, your referee for this evening is Willie Collum and is assisted in the VAR suite by Mr S Conroy and Mr T McManus................."

 

It would all be fine I'm sure 😆

[colinmaroon]

The queue of of Old Firm players, John Sutton, Andy Walker, Davie Provan,  you can just see it

 

"He didn't mean to lift his foot that high.  A breath of wind caught his leg  and he was forced to lift his foot.  We reverse the decision.  There was no intent to raise his foot.  However, it was turned into dangerous play by Cochrane putting his head in and he is given a retrospective yellow."

 

 

[Joey J J Jr Shabadoo]

One thing VAR proves is that players (or ex-players) are stereotypically thick, with a failure to understand the rules.

[henrysmithsgloves]

Can just imagine it,meet the var team,just for old firm matches 🤔

[Jim Panzee]

9 minutes ago, Byyy The Light said:

Most of the pundits we watch every week don’t know the rules. Some of their comments on a weekly basis are laughable.

 

I’d much rather they used ex referees who are no longer fit enough to get around the pitch.
 

Ideally foreign ones who can work from home as the cost argument for flying them over doesn’t come in to it these days. 

go down the route of international cricket - impartial foreign officials all the way - especially on the pitch. the bigot brothers would shit themselves. 

[colinmaroon]

How many ex-players are agreeing with the Celtic penalty?  PS I note it's the ex-cheats by and large who say it wasn't a penalty.  They saw the old "insert the leg" ploy.

 

High tackles already given reds this season.

 

Penalty for Hearts also a decision given this season.

 

Can you imagine the much reduced coverage of a very rare week when one of the Uglies gets decisions given against them, if it had been the other way round?

 

[GBJambo]

Disaster . The players don’t know the rules plus they wouldn’t be impartial 

[Daveandal]

The problem is alot of pros ex or otherwise don't know the rules.

 

Something our journalist seem scared to point out.

[GorgieFifeLife]

They are saying that ex pros would show some common sense but the laws of the game are not based on common sense they are simply the laws which need to be implemented.  We need a more respected and dominant refereeing structure similar to rugby.  Referees who are foreign or converted from other sports where they have no ties to Scottish football may be an option.

[Rockwell]

Get Charlie mullgrew In the var room .he can just leave his kids in his car freezing while he and the other ex old firm pros look at every reason to give every decision to the uglies 

[kingantti1874]

7 minutes ago, GBJambo said:

Disaster . The players don’t know the rules plus they wouldn’t be impartial 

So true.  Mark Wilson on sportscene asking if hof was offside for the second goal.  Even though celtic player headed it back to him.  
 

Folk claiming Yang shouldn’t have been red carded, even though they all said red for stmirren earlier in season.

 

scottish football is a biased hellhole, even ex players in the media with no allegiance to them are scared to call it as it is for fear of being cancelled lol

[Deevers]

If our own officials can’t be trusted then bring in some from England. 

 

Using ex pros for VAR would be an abject disaster.

 

The real answer here is a complete revamp of refereeing here ensuring that people get to the top on ability and not because they come from one of three or four West of Scotland Referees Association.  That's the elephant in the room - officials that everyone knows have a partiality for one or other of the Old Firm. That’s what Rodger’s is angry about. Not a peep from him when they get decisions from someone everyone knows is “Celtic minded”.  High time this was sorted out - and if it means using officials from elsewhere until it is then so be it.

[stirlo]

As others have pointed out: (1) many ex-pros don't seem to know the rules and seem to think the referees should ignore the rules and just employ 'common sense' and (2) it's hardly as if ex-pros all agree on these controversial calls - often opinion is split right down the middle.

 

The problem is generally with the rules themselves. Pretty much everyone seems to agree that the handball rules as they stand are ridiculous and result in way too many penalties. Similarly I think most would agree that far too many penalties are given for situations where there is 'contact' but the attacking player basically engineers the contact with the defender's foot/leg. So the priority should be doing something about the rules themselves. 

 

[The Treasurer]

Dream team of Lennon and Beaton or Collum and Boyd would be entertaining 

[i8hibsh]

By ex pros they mean old firm establishment.

 

*****.

[boag1874]

37 minutes ago, Byyy The Light said:

Most of the pundits we watch every week don’t know the rules. Some of their comments on a weekly basis are laughable.

 

I’d much rather they used ex referees who are no longer fit enough to get around the pitch.
 

Ideally foreign ones who can work from home as the cost argument for flying them over doesn’t come in to it these days. 

This 100%, players don’t have a clue about the rules so it would just become a shambles.

 

Now ex-pros in consulting roles with regards to rule changes to give ifab a bit of perspective I can see the sense in but actually enforcing those rules no chance

[BlueRiver]

You'd have some fud going on about malice in a challenge for half an hour whilst the others tried to point out it's not actually part of the rule. 

[David McCaig]

55 minutes ago, Daveandal said:

The problem is alot of pros ex or otherwise don't know the rules.

 

Something our journalist seem scared to point out.

or more bizarrely they do know the rules, but don't believe in playing to them!!

[gordon simpson]

1 hour ago, meister said:

It would be an absolute nightmare !! Can you imagine the conspiracy theories, digging back into a players history and school they attended to determine which part of the OF they would favour ??

 

The only way it might, MIGHT, work is if we used players from down south and vice versa for helping with VAR.

this 

[cosanostra]

It won't matter who they get. The Old Firm will cry every time they lose anyway.

[Mikey1874]

1 hour ago, Daveandal said:

The problem is alot of pros ex or otherwise don't know the rules.

 

Something our journalist seem scared to point out.

 

All that's been confirmed this weekend. Big feature article on BBC Scotland website proving that. 

[merrymac]

33 minutes ago, The Treasurer said:

Dream team of Lennon and Beaton or Collum and Boyd would be entertaining 

🤣Games would be about 4 hours long, waiting to get agreement over a decision. 

[OTT]

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

[Victorian]

Ex-pros should be kept as far away from VAR as is humanly possible.  They can barely produce a worthwhile opinion about VAR,  let alone actually be competent to be VAR.  Most ex-pros believe they are ordained with a special knowledge that makes formal rules redundant.  

 

Rules require the removal of the maximum amount of subjectivity.  Rules by opinion and rules by personal experience are not rules at all.  It's anarchy.

 

Ex-pros?  Shut your traps.  You do not know the rules.

[Byyy The Light]

2 minutes ago, OTT said:

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

 

Really good shout.

[Jim Panzee]

4 minutes ago, OTT said:

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

Good post

[Deevers]

6 minutes ago, OTT said:

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

Absolutely spot on.  The Refereeing Department at Hampden is an absolute shambles and has been for more than thirty years. Get rid of the bias and get a competitive league. Simple as that. 

[Ferryjambo99]

There's nothing more irritating than ex pros trying to make out that the only people who 'get' football and should make decisions about football are pros and ex pros. It's insulting to every supporter who gives up their time and money to watch the game. 

 

Also, the myth that referees have never played the game is just nonsense. Every referee will have played at some level, and several referees have played to a high standard 

 

 

[Victorian]

Ex-pros could conceivably become competent enough to be involved.  Just become an official referee of sufficient grade / seniority.  Go through the exact same process of becoming a top referee as any other referee.  No other competence is valid.  Even then there might still be a question regarding whether or not their playing experience is likely to unduly influence their ability to apply the rules of the game.

[The Treasurer]

8 minutes ago, OTT said:

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

This is not the worst idea I have heard. 

Means everyone pays what they can afford, after all Uefa keep banging on about football is for all, not just the elite 

[OTT]

1 minute ago, Ferryjambo99 said:

There's nothing more irritating than ex pros trying to make out that the only people who 'get' football and should make decisions about football are pros and ex pros. It's insulting to every supporter who gives up their time and money to watch the game. 

 

Also, the myth that referees have never played the game is just nonsense. Every referee will have played at some level, and several referees have played to a high standard 

 

 

 

Yep! Willie Collum was a goalkeeper  

 

Kind of makes all his buying straight away of blatant dives in the box even more offensive tbh.

[colinmaroon]

1 hour ago, GorgieFifeLife said:

They are saying that ex pros would show some common sense but the laws of the game are not based on common sense they are simply the laws which need to be implemented.  We need a more respected and dominant refereeing structure similar to rugby.  Referees who are foreign or converted from other sports where they have no ties to Scottish football may be an option.

 

It's actually a cultural problem.  The rules are objective but more and more, decisions are applied subjectively.  It's a disaster for society and it would be a disaster in football.

 

[Fozzyonthefence]

1 hour ago, GBJambo said:

Disaster . The players don’t know the rules plus they wouldn’t be impartial 

The referees aren’t impartial either, although they do tend to know the laws of the game better than players. 

[colinmaroon]

2 minutes ago, Ferryjambo99 said:

There's nothing more irritating than ex pros trying to make out that the only people who 'get' football and should make decisions about football are pros and ex pros. It's insulting to every supporter who gives up their time and money to watch the game. 

 

Also, the myth that referees have never played the game is just nonsense. Every referee will have played at some level, and several referees have played to a high standard 

 

 

 

I would go so far as to say that many supporters know more than the players.

 

[JimmyCant]

The first thing that has to change is reverting handball back to what it was originally. ie a deliberate playing of the ball with the hand. That would include moving your hand (or lower arm) deliberately to contact the ball. 
 

Our penalty on Sunday, whilst very welcome and covered by the current interpretation, was frankly a fecking joke

 

reverting back to the old school rule would take a huge chunk of the VAR controversy out of the equation

Edited March 5 by JimmyCant

[Fozzyonthefence]

2 minutes ago, colinmaroon said:

 

It's actually a cultural problem.  The rules are objective but more and more, decisions are applied subjectively.  It's a disaster for society and it would be a disaster in football.

 

A lot of decisions have to be subjective, there is no way around this.  Offside is objective, handball should be objective but many fouls are subjective because contact doesn’t necessarily mean foul. 

[Fozzyonthefence]

2 minutes ago, JimmyCant said:

The first thing that has to change is reverting the handball back to what it was originally. ie a deliberate playing of the ball with the hand. That would include moving your hand (or lower arm) deliberately to contact the ball. 
 

Our penalty on Sunday, whilst very welcome and covered by the current interpretation, was frankly a fecking joke

 

reverting back to the old school rule would take a huge chunk of the VAR controversy out of the equation

Definitely.  But then what about when a defender prevents a goal with an accidental handball (with arms at his side) on the goal line?  Do you tweak it to include that as a penalty too?

[JimmyCant]

2 minutes ago, Fozzyonthefence said:

Definitely.  But then what about when a defender prevents a goal with an accidental handball (with arms at his side) on the goal line?  Do you tweak it to include that as a penalty too?

GENUINELY Accidental handball should never be a foul/penalty IMO. 

[Dazo]

41 minutes ago, OTT said:

The problem isn't VAR, its the officials and I'm sorry but the prospect of sticking guys like Barry Ferguson, Kris Boyd, Tam McManus or Lee McCulloch in there is utterly terrifying. 

 

IMO Football is now big enough to warrant full time, professional referees being ran centrally via UEFA. Every top flight league in Europe that is fully professional, should be entitled to professional referees. If every league was taxed 0.5% of their TV deal, you'd easily pay for it and because it would be proportional, England alone would be contributing £83.75m. Refs could learn their trade in the lower leagues of the country they are from and then the governing body could put them forward for acceptance into the UEFA professional programme. 

 

Would remove allegations of bias in the sense of Weegie refs probably being OF fans - as we'd have foreign refs by default. Would improve standards as there would actually be controls in place rather than letting ***** like Iain Brines grade their pals and refs wouldn't be juggling multiple jobs. 

It wouldn’t change a single thing as the defeated team will always find something to complain about. Football fans, players and staff are generally the most biased unsporting types in professional sport. Until that culture and mindset changes from within who Refs our game will have little impact imo. That said I think having full time professional refs in Scotland would slightly raise standards. 

[jamboinglasgow]

I agree with a lot on here.  The presenter on Clyde Superscoreboard last night made the same point about ex-pros in VAR, unless you had someone who had never played in Scotland before then you will get the same nonsense as Celtic fans claiming Beaton is Rangers fan and anti-Celtic. I see a lot on here agree as do I.

 

One thing I do see is there has been a lot of criticism, particularly down south, about the length of time some decisions take. I do wonder if that is a consequence of the scrutiny every VAR decision now gets in the press and on TV. If you are operating VAR, rather than having a look checking once and passing the decision to the ref, you are going to repeatedly check everything just in case you have missed something tiny, which if missed will be picked up by the pundits who will make a big deal out of it. So what may have taken a minute to check becomes 5 minutes.

 

I almost think there needs to be less focus on VAR decisions to make things work rather than the intensive level it is now.

[Ribble]

Involving ex-players is a terrible idea, a huge number of the ex-pro's out there barely sat standard grades yet the proposal is to have them read, comprehend and remember over 200 pages of rules that are written like a legal document?

 

Then there is the massive issue of bias, you'd need to implement rules preventing them from involvement in games directly or indirectly involving any of that players ex-clubs, take someone like Paul Hartley, he'd be unable to be involved in games involving or directly impacting Hamilton, Raith, Hibs, Morton, St Johnstone, Hearts, Celtic, Aberdeen, Alloa, Dundee, Falkirk or Cove and then he also couldn't be involved in games involving rivals of those clubs so also rules out Motherwell, Dunfermline, Rangers, Dundee United so that's 16 out of 40 teams whose games he could never officiate, apply the same rules to every ex-player and you'd end up with teams getting the same VAR team every other week.

 

There's also a secondary bias that that would cause issues with ex-players being on VAR, each player favours his position so you'd end up with ex-defenders not awarding penalties, ex-forwards awarding them for almost anything, imagine a Jim Goodwin or a Gogic in the VAR room folk would have legs hanging off before VAR asked the ref to take a look at anything!

 

There are lots of things that can be done to improve refereeing/VAR, none of them should involve anyone that played the game at a high level, at most there could be more active recruitment of players retiring from injury, youth players dropping out the game where there is a accelerated pathway to top level refereeing/VAR

[JamboAl]

The real problem with refereeing in Scotland is lack of sporting integrity not helped by the SFA.

To have a Glasgow ref, reffing a Glasgow team, in a match in Glasgow is beyond belief, yet this happens often with the Uglies.

On Sunday the officials were Don Robertson (Glasgow), Colin Stevens (Glasgow) with John Beaton (Glasgow) on VAR.  Whether the decisons on Sunday were right or wrong, it fosters suspicion when maybe it was to save expenses by bringing the officials through in the Celtic team bus.

Surely someone in the media could have the balls to to put their head above the parapet and highlight this shit show which has gone on for years.  It is amazing but far from surprising that, when either of the arse cheeks perceive that they have been hurt by reffing decisions, there is a furore in the media with widespread coverage but not a whisper when the shoe is on the other foot

and

What are the CEOs at Hearts, Hibs etc doing by not taking this up vigorously with the SFA?

[BRY]

30 minutes ago, JimmyCant said:

GENUINELY Accidental handball should never be a foul/penalty IMO. 

 

But therein lies the subjectivity.

Who's to say what was an accident and what wasn't...?

[upgotheheads]

1 hour ago, Daveandal said:

The problem is alot of pros ex or otherwise don't know the rules.

 

Something our journalist seem scared to point out.

 

It's not always about interpretation, sometimes the rules are wrong in the first place. The handball we got wasn't even claimed by our own players, there was no risk of a goal coming directly from it and the player had no idea where the ball was. It shouldn't be too difficult to frame a set of rules, here's my suggestion.

 

The ball must be moving towards the goal, or toward an attacking player with sight of the goal.

The arm should be in a position that effectively increases the body profile of the player. 

[OTT]

5 minutes ago, Dazo said:

It wouldn’t change a single thing as the defeated team will always find something to complain about. Football fans, players and staff are generally the most biased unsporting types in professional sport. Until that culture and mindset changes from within who Refs our game will have little impact imo. That said I think having full time professional refs in Scotland would slightly raise standards. 

 

Its just when we cast our minds back to when Lennon triggered a referees strike, nobody ever said that wished the Scottish referees would come back sooner, also don't think there was any real controversey with any of them. 

 

Theres always going to be sour grapes when a team loses, but I think the Scottish refs association has been ran into the ground. Moving to full time professional refs appointed by UEFA would be a welcomed change IMO. 

[RENE]

I've said it before, we should be using ex refs from England or Europe with no connection to Scottish football.  Only the clubs should be told who they are and no information given to the media. Then, and only then, will we be sure of no bias.