Escargot

He must have been hideously bullied by the other refs to hide it. Mad.

No chocolats for you this Christmas.

especially the HT exchange between var and the ref where they discuss what to do (to cover up).

Ask them to give us three points. It is unprecedented so go the whole hog.

They were rabbiting so fast makes me think they were imbibing energizers because of the fatigue.

The league has the possibility to penalise clubs 3 points (fielding unregistered player etc). In this instance they could give us 3 points because of the level of incompetence.

And Oliver was immediately aware, calling for the game to be stopped. Appalling stuff.

That plus the sappers in the press and media trying to undermine Liverpool's position.

PGMOL are trying to resolve this mess without actually engaging with us on the details. They continue digging.

You're right in that conflict of interest in post-Johnson Britain will be just waved away but I've been pushing it to eliminate the need for conspiracy theories and/or proof of corruption. If this ever goes as far as a legal battle (go on FSG) the situation changes.

The simple fact that they are going is a clear conflict of interest and should be enough to sack them all irrespective of the details.

There is also this twaddle in the guardian by someone I've never heard of : 4) Push back It has never been tried but there remains the possibility that the best solution to improving refereeing standards is to stop demonising individuals and castigating their decisions. Liverpool were wronged on Saturday but to read their statement you’d think they were denouncing the creation of a breakaway European Super League, so forceful was the language. And they are hardly alone in indulging in heat and hyperbole; VAR bashing is a contact sport, engaged in by pundits, fans and journalists alike on a weekly basis. Criticism is often histrionic, tending towards conspiratorial, and a lot of people who indulge in it should know better. That this behaviour is not harmless and has real-world effects, including the widespread and often violent abuse of referees at grassroots level, cannot be ignored. It also surely affects the recruitment of new talent. At the beginning of the season, PGMOL spoke to players and managers about improving their behaviour towards officials as part of a “participant behaviour charter”. Perhaps we could all do with signing up to one. As someone said yesterday, it will not take long before the narrative changes and everyone turns on us.

So PGMOL are claiming that the ref wasn't told until haiftime thus restricting his choice of solution. If so, this is all on VAR. The audio for the whole of the half after the decision needs to be released as proof of this. They could have had a discussion with both managers at half time in order to find an agreed solution.

It's the mafia calling in favours.

Exactly. It is what a functioning VAR system would provide. We don't have that.

Probably Clément Turpin. Good ref him.

VAR could have had a word in his ear to say that was a mistake so that he didn't pull out the second yellow like he was on speed.

How many games have we watched where persistant fouling goes unpunished? Giving two yellows for those innocuous fouls was harsh in my view. As Tomkins points out, there hasn't been an opposition player given a second yellow against Liverpool for over 5 years.

If refs applied a rule that two fouls = two yellows, Rodri (and others) would never finish a half of football.

Yeah I know I could have said "not" rather than "except".

Baldies from Yorkshire are the worst (predictable) except Taylor (weird) but especially the one from yesterday (quelle surprise) plus Tierney is dreadful. And some of the retired ones. It does run to 64 pages......

Tomkins has released his data study of refs 2015 to 2023. Interesting read : https://tomkinstimes.substack.com/p/homer-sapiens-refs-vars-and-proving

That was with Oliver as ref. He was terrible that day.

Never going to happen. It'll be soz we made a mistake but the game is over. England will be demoted one weekend and will be back on var for our away game against the City cheats.

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