Luck-o-Meter (11)

 

Gosh, I thought for a while that PGMOL might have actually managed to deliver us a 'Fuck-Up-FREE Saturday' at long last, but.... Well, once again, so near and yet so far. There were three dodgy decisions at Anfield, but all of them were somewhat in the grey zone... and probably wouldn't have changed the ultimate result (although they did, of course, have a huge impact on FPL points returns). At Wolves, though, there was one very contentious 50/50 decision (probably more like 60/40 in Southampton's favour), and one 'How the HELL did they let that happen?' Good grief.

Unai Emery, naturally, was a little pissed off that his side had two plausible penalty shouts turned down, with only the most cursory re-examination by the VAR team. I thought Konate's shove in Watkins's back was the more clearcut appeal; Bradley's brief tug on Pau Torres's shirt was minimal - and might have been argued to have been caused by the Liverpool defender being thrown off balance by the Villa man behind him (Rogers, I think?) having two handfulls of his shirt...  For me, these were both fairly soft 50-50 calls, not egregious miscarriages of justice. But the mere occurrence of such tight decisions in the game causes a flicker on the Luck-o-Meter. The more major controversy in this game should have been Bailey's avoiding an early red card for bundling Salah to the ground when clear through on goal. The fact that another Liverpool player (Nunez) got to the loose ball first, successfully creating and converting another goal-scoring chance immediately, does not alter the fact that Salah's initial opportunity was denied by the foul. Some people question if it was in fact a foul, but since a red card was riding on the decision, VAR should surely have asked the referee to look at it again, to be sure.

There were two penalty appeals in the game at Brentford too, but neither of them had any substance. Nathan Collins has developed a habit of throwing himself to the ground to try to win a decision, and this was one of his more theatrical iterations of the move. Evanilson's claim late in the game looked much more convincing at first, but TV replays showed he had merely tripped over his own feet (maybe there was a suspicion that he'd been thrown out of his stride by the slightest of contacts on his heel by Pinnock...?). I was more irritated by the VAR pondering on Wissa's first goal; there was a suspicion that the ball had bounced onwards to him out of the ruck of players at the near-post from the arm of one of his teammates; but surely there was a rather greater suspicion that that teamamte (didn't catch who it was) had been holding down one of the Bournemouth defenders - which was apparently not considered at all. And on either question, TV coverage only showed one view of the incident, which was not clear enough to allow any decision to be reached. VAR surely should have had access to more angles; but if they didn't, or if none of them provided a decisive view of the incident - they should have announced 'No determination possible'. My major frustration with VAR as it currently operates is the complete lack of clarity about what's going on; they should have very clear and simple procedures which everyone can understand and follow; they should always share the pictures they believe to have been decisive (or indecisive), and they should always announce which incidents have been checked, and WHY decisions have been reached. Sometimes, explanations of decisions appear to reach the TV commentators and are passed on to the public; but only sometimes, and usually only very minimal. Most of the time, we just don't know what's going on with this.

Smith Rowe owners can count themselves very unfortunate, I think, that he wasn't awarded a penalty early on, when Lacroix completely cleaned him out. Neither of the angles of the tackle shown on TV convinced me that the Palace defender had got anything on the ball at all; and even if he had, that is not an absolute defence when you take so much of the man! There was another rough break for Emile when he was adjudged offside by a kneecap as he stroked the ball home at the culmination of a thrillingly quick counter-attack. I couldn't see anything in the alleged 'handball' for Harry Wilson's second either (although it looked as though Andersen had won posession at the start of the move with a fairly horrific foul just in front of his own penalty area, so... ultimately all fair, perhaps). So, a bit more refereeing flakiness here. 

West Ham demanded a few outstanding saves of Pickford, and their Crysencio Summerville produced the game's two outstanding moments, in defence and attack, with a superb recovery run and last-ditch block to deny Everton a goal in the first half, and then cracking a shot of his own against the foot of the far post towards the end of the game

The disallowing of Manning's quick equaliser at Wolves was contentious - and could have swung the entire game. While we can see why it was given, there was a strong counter-case that Semedo had knowingly stepped across the Southampton player and was actually tripping him. And it again raises questions of what the threshold for a VAR intervention is (the ref appeared to have had a clear view of the clash, and initially thought nothing of it), and whether the instruction to review on the pitchside monitor overwhelmingly prejudices a referee towards changing his mind. But that arguable screw-up paled into insignificance behind the later double screw-up for Wolves's second goal. While one doesn't like to see such a stunning strike as Cunha's disallowed, Wolves had clearly won possession in the middle of the park via not just one but TWO really egregious fouls - both of which had somehow been overlooked by the referee. So, what was VAR doing? Checking for possible infringements in the lead-up to a goal is supposed to be a key part of their duties; and both of these offences were absolutely clearcut. It just beggars belief!

I had that misgiving about the definitiveness of video reviews again with regard to the disallowing of Solanke's effort against Ipswich: I couldn't see clearly on the pictures shown on TV that the ball had bounced off his left forearm; it looked as though it might have come off the defender's thigh instead; and the picture resolution and framerate were just not sharp enough to determine that unequivocally. Now, I feel very confident that that was in fact the correct decision because: a) Solanke looked a bit shamefaced about the incident, and raced back to the centre-circle without celebrating the goal; b) the Ipswich players unanimously and immediately appealed for the handball; c) none of the Spurs players complained when the decision came through. However,... we don't make these decisions based on reading the players' body-language; we make them based on what we can supposedly see on the TV pictures - and I don't think we could see anything in this instance. And Manchester United's second goal (eventually credited as an own-goal against Christiansen) looked far more as if it had touched Bruno Fernandes' arm.

Havertz's apparent opener against Chelsea was ruled out for a wafer-thin 'offiside': the 'right' decision, I suppose, under the current rules - but I hate to see goals diallowed for such tiny margins.

I did also notice this week (and I think, perhaps, it's been a rising trend for a few weeks now) an unusually high number of really bad line calls for goal-kicks, corners, throw-ins. These never attract as much public attention, as much censure from the punditry, as grosser officiating errors involving red cards or penalties, but they can still sometimes have a huge impact on a game's outcome - particularly with so many goals coming from corner routines this year.

There were a number of near-misses in the games at Chelsea and Spurs; Ipswich's Burgess crashing an early header against the crossbar was probably the one that wiggled the Luck-o-Meter dial the most.

Joachim Andersen's superb goal-line clearance was perhaps the one really outstanding piece of individual brilliance in defence this week, while Bruno Fernandes' and Garnacho's curlers from outside the box were the only exceptional goal strikes (although both probably should have been blocked off by more alert defenders).

Not too much in the way of upset results, either. Spurs fans will doubtless object that their undoing by Ipswich was a one-in-a-million freak, but it really wasn't; they have been looking for a while as if they could lose to anyone on an off-day. Similarly, no-one should have been expecting faltering City's trip to the Amex to be a pushover. However, I felt that Brentford's win over Bournmouth, and Wolves's over Southampton were a little unjust.

The 'Team of the Week' is again a little bit strange, with top players like Saka, Son, Palmer, Foden, and Jackson and Solanke failing to register any points, and Haaland not many. While Wissa and Cunha have both shown very strong form in recent weeks, these are still somewhat speculative and hopeful picks, given their teams' poor form; neither were clear favourites to win this week, even at home (and Cunha's goal should not have been allowed to stand!). While it might have been reasonable to fancy Pickford for a clean sheet against floundering West Ham, I cannot see how he also managed to garner 2 'saves' points; and the rest of the leading defenders are also very unexpected: Toti, Mazraoui, and Tarkowski??

Overall, not that much unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary in the play this week; but, I'm afraid, still enough egregiously awful refereeing decisions to make this a strong 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.