Referee Standards and VAR

[Indianablue]

From watching a few of the games yesterday, it is very clear that referees are becoming reliable on VAR correcting their decisions and telling them what to do rather than using the system simply to help them out when they need it.
A bit like SAT NAVS in cars, drivers have lost all sense of direction and for even the simplest journeys they have to have a sat nav.

My mates following championship teams and lower have been used to declining standards but would rather have that as opposed to the excitement being sucked out of the game.

I listened to one pundit describe the errors as the precise reason VAR is required, lacking the intelligence to realise that VAR has created the wet nurse scenario.

Newcastle's handball/penalty denial was a shocker, as was the yellow for Digne ( a straight red was required.

City had a decent goal chalked off from Marmoush. Ok in real time it might have been close but the Salford player playing him onside was the nearest to the linesman.

These officials are getting worse when they are officiating games, once into the VAR room they are becoming like anonymous keyboard warriors analising issues to the far end of a fart and interpreting rules, applying context where there is none. The game is slowing being ruined

[Harry Dowd scored]

During the Villa barcodes I couldn’t believe what I was watching, the Villa goal clearly offside, Digne should have seen red for a diabolical foul, the no penalty decision bonkers, I was convinced the game was fixed.
But back to the OP. Most of the referees were doing the job before VAR, so they were clearly incompetent then & VAR has made them lazy & incompetent, but seriously I do think they have grown to rely on VAR as a back stop for their incompetence. They are either bent or useless. That’s the only conclusion.

[zuricity]

Isn't Refereeing Standards and VAR a kind of oxymoron.

[nottsblue]

The cynical side of me wonders whether the match officials in the Villa game were told to get decisions wrong so badly that fans wouldn’t be against VAR as much.

There were three absolute howlers in there that honestly need looking into how and why they were made. If on a free kick a linesman cannot see an offside as clear as Abraham was then quite frankly he shouldn’t be running the line. You can forgive errors too a degree in open play on a fast counter for example, but from a dead ball it’s simply schoolboy stuff. And the handball was laughable. Remember when Sterling turned his back on a cross and it was given as handball because the referee guessed? As bad as that

[carl_feedthegoat]

Isn't Refereeing Standards and VAR a kind of oxymoron.

There are far too many morons within PIGMOL

[john@staustell]

The cynical side of me wonders whether the match officials in the Villa game were told to get decisions wrong so badly that fans wouldn’t be against VAR as much.

There were three absolute howlers in there that honestly need looking into how and why they were made. If on a free kick a linesman cannot see an offside as clear as Abraham was then quite frankly he shouldn’t be running the line. You can forgive errors too a degree in open play on a fast counter for example, but from a dead ball it’s simply schoolboy stuff. And the handball was laughable. Remember when Sterling turned his back on a cross and it was given as handball because the referee guessed? As bad as that

Not so sure that one was incompetence