Is Scottish Football Officiating improving?

[Ricardo Quaresma]

I think I've noticed a shift in the performance of our Officials in this League recently

 

An improvement, yes, but to what extent; where is it coming from? Are the SFA / SPFL cooking something up? What?

 

What have you noted, if anything?

[OTT]

Its getting worse. There is a hyper concentration on West Coast based officials which brings with it a serious question about impartiality (OF centric areas) and competence (being promoted because of what local refereeing association they belong to, rather than because they've actually earned the promotion). 

 

VAR isn't being used correctly. The situation with Aberdeen where VAR effectively overruled the ref with a pure guess is horrendous. I also didn't like Willie Collum using VAR to re-referee the game. Particularly with the OF its almost used as a net to catch the slightest infringement. Some of Rangers pens have been genuinely laughable. 

 

I do want VAR to stay, but we need to seriously improve the officials. I'd go so far as to say that current referees shouldn't be using it. VAR should be a specialist role, we don't want any repeats of the Mike Dean/Chelsea incident where he decided not to intervene because his mate was having a tough time as is. Rules matter. Impartiality matters. If we could outsource it, I'd back that 100%. 

[kila]

The concept of VAR isn't the problem, it is those using it and their agendas.

 

Aberdeen's disallowed goal epitomises that - when the system failed those operating it still managed to **** up. SFA have since come out saying it was the right call all along, but it wasn't clear at the time and they guessed.

 

It is no surprise the issues with VAR mirror those of our on-field referees. They are all cut from the same cloth: bunch of arrogant, incompetent, corrupt ****ers who are only there to ensure Rangers and Celtic are duelling for the title. Manipulation on a grand scale if you want a conspiracy - from the fixtures, home/away TV games, punishments for managers and refereeing decisions. They all are in favour of the duopoly. We merely make up the numbers.

 

[Ricardo Quaresma]

I will clarify what I'm alluding to in particular but good stuff so far, lads

 

I don't want to pre-empt any responses; I saw the sheep decision you two are referring to just once and I will have another look

 

In the case of the sheep though, I reckon they're so 5h1te they have a debt to pay after last season; then they can start on an equal footing

 

Will have a look again and give opinion though 👍

[If carlsberg did rivals...]

Since time began, all the officials were interested in was helping Celtic and Rangers regardless of who they were playing, every fan outside these two acknowledge this. Yet every Celtic and Rangers fan thinks the officials are against them in favour of the other mob! 

[Deevers]

What VAR has done is to expose officials whose impartiality has been regularly called into question. It’s also exposed the incompetent to scrutiny.

[gregzy2k7]

Officiating is definitely not improving,

 

This coincides with VAR definitely not improving,

 

The two go hand In hand, if the officials improve, then VAR would most definitely improve imo as less and less mistakes would be done.

 

Clearly VAR is here to stay as we have invested alot of time and money into it,

 

So the only option is to improve the officials and or officiating,

 

How do you do that?

 

Well for starters you have to make them full time proffesionals and pay them a decent salary, so that they would want to give up their other jobs, that and give them better tools/technology (more cameras) and education to do their jobs, also I wouldn't mind if we could implement a few foreign refs into our game who don't have a vested interest in one half of glasgow.

 

Just my tuppence worth,

[jamboozy]

1 hour ago, kila said:

The concept of VAR isn't the problem, it is those using it and their agendas.

 

Aberdeen's disallowed goal epitomises that - when the system failed those operating it still managed to **** up. SFA have since come out saying it was the right call all along, but it wasn't clear at the time and they guessed.

 

It is no surprise the issues with VAR mirror those of our on-field referees. They are all cut from the same cloth: bunch of arrogant, incompetent, corrupt ****ers who are only there to ensure Rangers and Celtic are duelling for the title. Manipulation on a grand scale if you want a conspiracy - from the fixtures, home/away TV games, punishments for managers and refereeing decisions. They all are in favour of the duopoly. We merely make up the numbers.

 

Well put, saved me from typing.👍

[Gillsland jack]

Var needs to stay, for years the gruesome got away with murder, now it gets looked at ten times over, so the wee cheating bassas need to try even harder to cheat.

 

When a VAR ref, overrules the ON field ref, he MUST show the on field ref ALL the angles, not just package it up to make the ref give a decision one way or the other.

[meister]

I don't think VAR necessarily improves the standard of referees, but it aids the standard of refereeing if that makes sense.

 

VAR is there to help refs, and in the main I think it does. The only decisions you will hear about after a game are the incorrect ones really and I think the incorrect ones are becoming less and less. It tends to be only absolute catastrophes that are being highlighted.

 

There was so much focus on VAR in the OF game the other weekend but there's not much debate that Beaton/VAR between them got the calls correct, which is a good thing. Without VAR, the game would have been a complete shitshow (Which would have been hysterical of course) and multiple calls wold have been wrong.

 

Improvement in the way our officials use VAR will mean it gets better and lessons will be learned, decisions will get quicker and they'll be less impactful on the flow of the game. But it'll take time unfortunately.

 

I'm not one that subscribes to the referees-have-agendas idea, I think they're fallible, get swayed by crowds and have pressure put on them by players, but that makes them human, not corrupt.

 

Even typing this out I'm thinking "Christ for someone in their mid forties that's a bit optimistic for Scottish football" but there you go, I do think it's heading in the right direction

[Dazo]

I would say officiating is clearly better in terms of impartiality and that is down to VAR. while it isn’t perfect I’m glad var is here and if they could speed it up a little I’d be okay with it. 

[meister]

26 minutes ago, Gillsland jack said:

Var needs to stay, for years the gruesome got away with murder, now it gets looked at ten times over, so the wee cheating bassas need to try even harder to cheat.

 

When a VAR ref, overrules the ON field ref, he MUST show the on field ref ALL the angles, not just package it up to make the ref give a decision one way or the other.

 

Agree with this as well, it shows transparency.

 

I watched the OF game in the pub at the weekend and when everyone was watching the Rangers penalty clips that Beaton was viewing, pretty much everyone, both sets of fans thought he was not getting all the evidence he should have been.

[PaddysBar]

1 minute ago, meister said:

I don't think VAR necessarily improves the standard of referees, but it aids the standard of refereeing if that makes sense.

 

VAR is there to help refs, and in the main I think it does. The only decisions you will hear about after a game are the incorrect ones really and I think the incorrect ones are becoming less and less. It tends to be only absolute catastrophes that are being highlighted.

 

There was so much focus on VAR in the OF game the other weekend but there's not much debate that Beaton/VAR between them got the calls correct, which is a good thing. Without VAR, the game would have been a complete shitshow (Which would have been hysterical of course) and multiple calls wold have been wrong.

 

Improvement in the way our officials use VAR will mean it gets better and lessons will be learned, decisions will get quicker and they'll be less impactful on the flow of the game. But it'll take time unfortunately.

 

I'm not one that subscribes to the referees-have-agendas idea, I think they're fallible, get swayed by crowds and have pressure put on them by players, but that makes them human, not corrupt.

 

Even typing this out I'm thinking "Christ for someone in their mid forties that's a bit optimistic for Scottish football" but there you go, I do think it's heading in the right direction

Agree 100% with everything you say. 
 

VAR has allowed the refs to correct mistakes on the whole. 

[Le Chat]

VAR should be a good thing, but if the guy sitting in the VAR room is the pal of the ref on the pitch who's just made another error, that's where it fails, because a lot of the time they shit out of making the correct decision because it's their pal.

 

It will only work the way it is supposed to when there are full time VAR officials who are completely seperate to and independant of the refs on the pitch.

 

[HeartsandonlyHearts]

No, No and Stay. Same as most other voters.

Keeping VAR just makes it easier to vote no on the first two. Our officials couldn’t officiate a game of curby.

[John Findlay]

Voted. No, no, get rid.

[Mikey1874]

Been some better games recently. VAR worked really well in the Brendan Rodgers 1 match ban Celtic game and Sunday's old firm game. 

 

VAR working okay mostly. Just a few strange decisions as I've been pointing out to Aberdeen fans today, strange penalty they got v St Johnstone and Motherwell disallowed goal against them. Plus obviously the ones we got apologies for. 

 

See what happens going forward.

[Ricardo Quaresma]

2 hours ago, Deevers said:

What VAR has done is to expose officials whose impartiality has been regularly called into question. It’s also exposed the incompetent to scrutiny.

 

It definitely did that; it demonstrated quite clearly, initially, at least, how many penalty calls we were being denied

 

Absolutely startling; we were getting a penalty damn near every week

[Ricardo Quaresma]

26 minutes ago, John Findlay said:

Voted. No, no, get rid.

 

I'm sure a lot of peeps would expect an OF maul-fest if that happened, John

 

I get visions of Levein's Sky interview after utd mauled rangers at ibrox, yet still got 'gubbed'

[Ron Burgundy]

We have had a few pens against Celtic that we would not have got without VAR so I suppose it's better here than not.

[Jim_Duncan]

Unplug it and use the money saved to attract professional referees from abroad.

 

Yes, we've had a few penalties out of VAR, but we've also had a few shocking decisions as well.

[KG1874]

One thing a noticed was after warnock saying the ref going tae the monitor and sticking by his decision wouldn’t happen in England and since then a few refs have followed suit.

[j1964m]

No they are still corrupt to the core penalty to rangers 

[Lone Striker]

I voted no, no, and stay - which seems a bit counter-intuitive.     As a few posters have said, having SFA refs in the VAR room effectively  telling a fellow SFA ref he's got a decision wrong ("go look at the monitor") seems to be an issue largely because they're all Glasgow centric.

 

Probably never going to happen... but my 2 suggestions -

 

1) Get non-SFA refs in the VAR room.  Ban SFA refs altogether from VAR duties.  Forever.

2) Re-boot VAR for 1 season to only deal with possible offsides, nothing else.  Then add possible fouls & handballs the season after.  

 

 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

The refs are getting faster at it, which is at least an improvement. We’re not having a 10 minute delays that we were seeing when it was first introduced.

 

In terms of the quality of the calls, that’s not going to improve as long as old firm managers are permitted to bully officials over calls they don’t like.

[Lone Striker]

2 minutes ago, Watt-Zeefuik said:

The refs are getting faster at it, which is at least an improvement. We’re not having a 10 minute delays that we were seeing when it was first introduced.

 

In terms of the quality of the calls, that’s not going to improve as long as old firm managers are permitted to bully officials over calls they don’t like.

Some VAR reviews are faster, but not all of them.   Put a time limit on VAR decision-making - say 1 minute.  If VAR can't determine if a goal should be disallowed or a penalty given/overturned within that time, it should revert back to the pitch ref to review and make the call.

 

[DesertDawg]

1 hour ago, Lone Striker said:

Some VAR reviews are faster, but not all of them.   Put a time limit on VAR decision-making - say 1 minute.  If VAR can't determine if a goal should be disallowed or a penalty given/overturned within that time, it should revert back to the pitch ref to review and make the call.

 

 

Improvement in VAR offside decisions is on the way.

 

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/68791135

 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

2 hours ago, Lone Striker said:

Some VAR reviews are faster, but not all of them.   Put a time limit on VAR decision-making - say 1 minute.  If VAR can't determine if a goal should be disallowed or a penalty given/overturned within that time, it should revert back to the pitch ref to review and make the call.

 

 

Yep. The NFL went through this like 20 years ago. There's a timer on a VAR ( or "instant replay") check, I believe 90 seconds. If the timer goes off and the ref is still undecided, the call on the field stands.