Premier League 2020/2021

Vilarrubi said:

Didn’t watch the game only saw that pathetic save at the end, but seen other mistakes from other games recently too.

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He shouldn't have been on the pitch in the 1st place since that VVD challenge.
But yh, look up the Matip header save.

He's just a moron gifted with a bit of athleticism and reflexes.

Wolfe said:

There is no question. A player is ahead of the line with a legal part of the body or he isn't.

Elbow offside doesn't exist. Can't score with anything below the armpit.

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Armpit offside did not exist either before 2018.
All these are new directives that resulted from sheer pedantry and inability to understand what the spirit of a law that was first established in 1863.

Wolfe said:

He shouldn't have been on the pitch in the 1st place since that VVD challenge.
But yh, look up the Matip header save.

He's just a moron gifted with a bit of athleticism and reflexes.

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Cmon, how many times was Messi taken down with horrible challenge when it was offside and nothing. These were never called.

(It's freaking stupid though!)

Birdy said:

Armpit offside did not exist either before 2018.
All these are new directives that resulted from sheer pedantry and inability to understand what the spirit of a law that was first established in 1863.

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Sorry mate, anyone talking about this being pedantic as if it's a negative thing is just disguising their laziness under the meaningless undefinable 'spirit of the law' arguments WRT applying the law precisely as it should be.

Armpit makes sense as by design it allows shoulder contact.

Wolfe said:

They weren't much better at all. They were better from about 60 min mark, average for the rest of the game.
.

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On the football side of the game, Liverpool were clearly better the whole 90 min



Everton only threat were the 3 headers that they would not have won with VVD on, and Adrian squeezing one in.

Several more low xG chances than Everton doesn't mean they were better. Game was pretty much even since VVD came off and until about 60 min mark. Then a few really good chances which they should have put away.

Wolfe said:

Sorry mate, anyone talking about this being pedantic as if it's a negative thing is just disguising their laziness under the meaningless undefinable 'spirit of the law' arguments WRT applying the law precisely as it should be.

Armpit makes sense as by design it allows shoulder contact.

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Pedantry is not always a negative thing.
It is in this case, because it showed that they never really understood the law.
I am not talking about anything abstract.
The law is clear: when players are level there is no offside. The law talks about players, not about elbows or armpit.
The whole discussion of determining which part of the body qualifies is misguided to say the least.

Think about what I wrote. Why no referee would have ever called those off-sides before 2018, even having access to VAR replays and angles?
Either the offside law was different back then or they fucked it up in the way of setting the VAR directives

Birdy said:

Pedantry is not always a negative thing.
It is in this case, because it showed that they never really understood the law.
I am not talking about anything abstract.
The law is clear: when players are level there is no offside. The law talks about players, not about elbows or armpit.
The whole discussion of determining which part of the body qualifies is misguided to say the least.

Think about what I wrote. Why no referee would have ever called those off-sides before 2018, even having access to VAR replays and angles?
Either the offside law was different back then or they fucked it up in the way of setting the VAR directives

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Of course it's about parts of players' bodies. It's you who doesn't understand 'players are level' inherently means parts of their body.
Nobody mentioned elbows. Elbows were illegal since the dawn of time. Armpits weren't. Shoulders weren't. Scoring with them isn't a problem and they're a good offside benchmark.

They wouldn't have called them, because they couldn't monitor it as well as they can now in real time several years back.

Offside law isn't different at all. It's the legality of parts of the arm that has been changing and where you have to consistently refer to.

Wolfe said:

Of course it's about parts of players' bodies. It's you who doesn't understand 'players are level' inherently means parts of their body.
Nobody mentioned elbows. Elbows were illegal since the dawn of time. Armpits weren't. Shoulders weren't. Scoring with them isn't a problem and they're a good offside benchmark.

They wouldn't have called them, because they couldn't monitor it as well as they can now in real time several years back.

Offside law isn't different at all. It's the legality of parts of the arm that has been changing and where you have to consistently refer to.

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You pretend you don't understand.
You were not born in 2018, and you have been watching football for many years.
Do you remember the off-sides that were wrongly called in the pre-VAR era? Do you remember many of them with armpit or shoulders being the issue?
I bet you cannot recall even a few of them.
On the contrary, you can recall (and we can all recall very well) tons of cases where the wrong call came down to a player being clearly ahead of the defender or clearly in-line/behind the defender.
And when i say the player (I have wrote it in the past), it is what the human eye judges to be the player: and that is the center of the body in any time-frame irrespective of whether his fingernail or toe is not in line with the center of the body. That's how human eye sees offside and it's stupid to change that.

Now that they would not have called them because they could not monitor them is false assumption. They would not have called them because there were no such directives in place, and they understood offside the way it has always been understood and the way the human eye judges.

Also, the discussion about which part of the body can score is also misguided.
Players make several steps before shooting and no player stays still in the position he had when the ball was played. It's irrelevant.

Birdy said:

You pretend you don't understand.
You were not born in 2018, and you have been watching football for many years.
Do you remember the off-sides that were wrongly called in the pre-VAR era? Do you remember many of them with armpit or shoulders being the issue?
I bet you cannot recall even a few of them.

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I don't have to be able to recall them. You're the one posing the case for letting something go without looking at it with something better than a human eye (something I said to you before, our optics are useless at precise judgement, and we have better tools to do that) as if a player being ahead with a scoring part of their body is somehow not offside. Despite admitting offsides are binary.

If they're binary, you need to decide what means 'players are level'. If it means you have to investigate each case of apparent no-offside, it makes perfect sense to do if you're able to do it. Otherwise you're simply not doing your job.

Also, the discussion about which part of the body can score is also misguided.
Players make several steps before shooting and no player stays still in the position he had when the ball was played. It's irrelevant.

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It's not irrelevant. You're offside with a legal part of your body at the moment of the pass or you're not.
Can't loosen this up or you'll open the law to abuse and inconsistency. If the only inconsistency that we have right now is being able to see the hairs of one players vs the other's then that's still better than not looking for it at all which is what you're suggesting.


You need to let go of your archaic concepts of judging things by human eye.

Happy with that derby. Thought we did well against one of the best teams in europe.

I'm kind of glad Pickford wasn't sent off specifically against VVD. Remember his leg breaker tackle against Mertens? Should have been off and they probably don't get out of their group and Anfield never happens

Wolfe said:

I don't have to be able to recall them. You're the one posing the case for letting something go without looking at it with something better than a human eye (something I said to you before, our optics are useless at precise judgement, and we have better tools to do that) as if a player being ahead with a scoring part of their body is somehow not offside. Despite admitting offsides are binary.

If they're binary, you need to decide what means 'players are level'. If it means you have to investigate each case of apparent no-offside, it makes perfect sense to do if you're able to do it. Otherwise you're simply not doing your job.

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-The fact that you cannot recall them supports my argument: you cannot recall them because that was never the issue until 2018.
-Being binary does not mean you need a precise machine to determine YES or NO. You want to obliterate human judgment, without having first assessed it's nature regarding offside law.

You are conflating 2 different aspects:
i) definition of the offside law.
ii) ability to implement it.

Precision has nothing to do with i), and everything to do with ii). The moment precision enters i) it means you are messing with what the offside law is.
Now with VAR and goal-line we have utmost optical precision.
The question now becomes on towards what to direct that precision. And here is where people get confused, because they have not reflected properly on what i) exactly is.
And i) has inherently in it the human understanding of 'ahead/behind/in-line' which is based on how the human eye sees.
If you want machine-precision in i), you are creating a new rule based on how a machine 'understands' ahead/behing/in-line.

[Now on a sidenote, I am not against determining scientifically how the human eye sees (although it needs a lot of work and consensus). And I have thought a bit on it (after realizing that's what infuriates people with the VAR offside calls), and I have come to the conclusions I have presented above: that the human eye judges by the position of the center of the body and looking at the body as a whole and not each and every part of it]

What I said in the first place (when I talked against pedantry) is that people thought 'now with VAR we need some directives on how to call them' which started the whole mess of impinging on i).
If that step was not taken, and referees were presented with all angles of paused replays with the criteria on how to judge not being further determined, you would have a situation of having ii) without transgressing into i) at all.
And I am sure if referees were given the material without directives, they would have continued to judge like they were doing until 2018.
So, I am not saying 'not look at it'. I am saying look at it without the new directives, the way any referee was looking at it for ever until very recently.

Wolfe said:

It's not irrelevant. You're offside with a legal part of your body at the moment of the pass or you're not.
Can't loosen this up or you'll open the law to abuse and inconsistency. If the only inconsistency that we have right now is being able to see the hairs of one players vs the other's then that's still better than not looking for it at all which is what you're suggesting.

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It is because you don't score the moment the ball is played, but many moments later.
Answer me this: Does legality (in regards to scoring) of parts of the body has anything to do with determining relative position of two runners?
I say it has nothing to do.
Offside is about determining the relative position of two runners against one another.

Chelsea's fun and also funny team to watch.

Birdy said:

-The fact that you cannot recall them supports my argument: you cannot recall them because that was never the issue until 2018.

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No it doesn't. Your argument is a fruitloop claim that dismisses the fact good cameras were not implemented in real time on every contentious decision. Refs didn't see anything on screens like everyone at home until circa 2018. Once FIFA managed to actually drag the sport out of caveman era where it has been relative to NBA etc, the precision of criteria for offside started to matter like never before.

-Being binary does not mean you need a precise machine to determine YES or NO. You want to obliterate human judgment, without having first assessed it's nature regarding offside law.

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You absolutely do need a machine to tell you if something is an offside or if it isn't based on parts of the body it refers to.
Especially since you, the viewer on a 3k screen, cannot see it with your useless 'naked eye' method.

And i) has inherently in it the human understanding of 'ahead/behind/in-line' which is based on how the human eye sees.
If you want machine-precision in i), you are creating a new rule based on how a machine 'understands' ahead/behing/in-line.

[Now on a sidenote, I am not against determining scientifically how the human eye sees (although it needs a lot of work and consensus). And I have thought a bit on it (after realizing that's what infuriates people with the VAR offside calls), and I have come to the conclusions I have presented above: that the human eye judges by the position of the center of the body and looking at the body as a whole and not each and every part of it]

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It doesn't matter what you're against mate. I'm telling you human eye is shit. Cameras see better. Fact. Read up on optics if you choose to not believe me. Therefore we use cameras, and we assume those they use for VAR are some of the best available (I'd hope), to determine decisions instead of some vague 'position of the center of the body' rubbish. End of story.

It is because you don't score the moment the ball is played, but many moments later.

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Doesn't matter if you made a mistake not calling the offside in the move that led to the goal.

This stuff is really so simple. And yet you cling to 'spirit of the law' platitudes that do not even apply in a binary matter.