Luck-o-Meter (12)

 

Fulham v Wolves was a thoroughly crazy game, with 3 of the 5 goals being absolute worldies... and Fulham battering the woodwork an additional 3 times (1 of them an attempted own-goal by Air-Nouri!!), with Raul somehow contriving to miss an open goalmouth from a few yards out.  Cunha coming up with 2 of those worldies (and setting up a teammate with a very sweet assist!) looks likely to be the single biggest factor in determining the weekly ranking in FPL. While he has been coming into sensational form since about mid-October, there were still reasons to be wary of him (until recently, he'd been mostly playing rather deeper, and looking likely to be more a provider than a frequent goalscorer himself; Wolves have been abysmal defensively, and looked like they might continue to struggle even against a run of 'softer' opponents in the second quarter of the season, and certainly can't have been favourites to win at Craven Cottage; and Cunha did have a worrying injury record last season...); but his ownership has more than quadrupled to 1.25 million over the past few gameweeks, and those 'prescient' (or jammy) managers who've brought him in already are enjoying a huge advantage this week.

'Near-Miss of the Week', though, might have to go to Antoine Semenyo's last-kick-of-the-game volley against Brighton that smashed against the top of the crossbar! And Baleba's sending-off in that game was ridiculous: there was clearly no foul for his second yellow card (scarcely, indeed, any contact at all - and what there was, surely 'initiated' by the Bournemouth player rather than him). Hello, VAR - WAKE UP! How were they not revewing that? That's their whole damn job! Hopefully, Brighton can get that decision overturned on appeal.

Although... Noni Madueke managing to clear Cole Palmer's shot off the Leicester goal-line might also be a contender!  The main issue in the Gameweek's opening fixture, though, was the unfathomable failure to send off either Ndidi or Soumare for absolutely dreadful challenges early in the game (and, yet again, we weren't told what VAR's view of these incidents was). The later penalty shout against Fofana was fatuous: indeed, Mavididi should probably have been booked for opportunistically somersaulting over his trailing leg. The penalty that was awarded was a bit 'soft': on multiple slow-motion replays, it was possible to discern Lavia stepping on the back of De Cordova-Reid's heel, but I think that was invisible to the naked eye. The Leicester forward had plainly tripped over his own heels just before that, and was already on the way down; it was only because he was losing balance and pitching forward that his rear foot was still planted, and thus unexpectedly just where Lavia's foot was about to land. I suppose it was a technically 'correct' decision (although the rules and their interpretive guidelines are so complex these days that I wouldn't be entirely sure), but it felt unjust, and very, very unlucky - there was scarcely any contact, and it was completely unintentional. Fortunately, it didn't have any impact on the result. But if even one of those sendings-off had been given, Chelsea would surely have won this game much more comfortably.

There was also here an early goal from Madueke which was eventually ruled out for the slenderest of offsides; and the offending attacker's foot was heavily blurred in the video still frame - so, I really don't see how they can claim to know where exactly the tip of the toe was at the critical moment. The decision against Merino in the Arsenal v Forest game was pretty tight too, and took a long time to resolve. This is the one thing in the current officiating that most inuriates and depresses me. 

[Side Rant: I've said it in this series before, and I'll probably say it again, but it is foolhardy to profess to be able to make offside decisions on such fine margins. There are problems with framerate and screen resolution and parallax compensation that mean it is, in practice, impossible to make reliable judgements to less than a centimetre or two [I'll use metric, in deference to the 'international audience'], at best... even if you can determine with absolute accuracy the moment at which the last pass left contact with the player making it. And you just can't. At the last World Cup, they were trialling that fancy 'automatic offside decision' technology, with 3-D CGI modelling of the players' relative positions, and the 'critical moment' apparently being determined by a sensor inside the ball measuring its acceleration. But that didn't really convince, as the graphic renderings often took a long time to appear, and sometimes didn't at all. But, more importantly, there was still some margin of doubt as to how that 'critical moment' was being determined. When a player's foot kicks a ball, his foot may be in contact with it for over a tenth of a second; and the peak acceleration - presumably what this gizmo at the World Cup was purporting to measure as definitive - is probably at least a few hundredths of a second after the first contact; the ball breaking contact with the foot possibly several hundredths later again. So, it really makes quite a lot of difference whether your 'critical moment' is defined as being the instant that a player first makes contact with the ball, or the instant it breaks contact with him. In my distant youth, I believe it was generally understood to be the latter; although, back then, it made no practical difference. 

Nowadays, with offside decisions being made for matters of centimetres, or sometimes seemingly even millimetres, it very much does matter. Two players sprinting in opposite directions can put a few metres between each other in a tenth of a second. Even feet moving at a brisk walk - at their peak acceleration in the step cycle - can cover some tens of centimetres. The Offside Law of old was simple, commonsensical, easy to understand and easy to apply: we looked at the players' upper bodies - the torso and hips of the attacking player had to be closer to the goal-line than any part of the torso and hips of the nearest defending player. Easy. And you'd always allow the attacking player the benefit of the doubt: you can't make these calls on matters of a few centimetres or less - a ripple of fat on the hips or the billowing of a shirt in the breeze might account for that much of a margin. Unless there was some clear daylight between the attacker's body and the defender's.... he was ONSIDE.  Can we go back to that??  PLEASE.]

We saw cracker of a penalty save from Dean Henderson at Villa Park (but why the hell was Youri Tielemans taking it??); and a few more outstanding pieces of work from both keepers, most notably Emi Martinez's phenomenal last-minute save from Jeffrey Schlupp's fierce drive. The penalty calls in that game looked fair enough, although Watkins's later shout was the kind of clumsy contact from a defender that we often see given.

Norgaard's sending-off was generally agreed by the punditry to have been ridiculous; his follow-through on Pickford was unavoidable,and - since both were moving towards each other - the contact entirely accidental. That's another one that should be overruled, but probably won't be. And it's another example, I fear, of the 'second look' instruction from VAR effectively being taken to mean 'change your mind!' These pitchside reviews ought to be undertaken with no advance bias, the referee entirely free to make either decision; but that is not happening.

The Southampton v Liverpool game was nearly spoiled by some very poor officiating (mostly Michael Oliver's fault on the VAR, I felt); indeed, Southampton fans will feel that it was spoiled. They had 3 good penalty appeals turned down for no convincing reason - and yet the one they were awarded was, for me, an obvious mistake. Oliver's protestation that there 'was no conclusive evidence' of where the contact occurred was preposterous, an abject abdicaton of his responsibility (and probably prompted by a sense of guilt or embarassment about the earlier incident where he'd turned down the shout against Konate on the left side of the box; that was a very slight push in the back, yes, but any push is illegal, it did tip the attacker off-balance, and it did obviously happen directly above or just inside the line at the side of the penalty area: absolutely clearcut penalty!). There was clear video footage of Robertson having the whole of his foot planted in front of the edge of the penalty box as he made the challenge with the lower-leg immediately above that foot. Even  if his leg bent or rolled towards the penalty area under the impact of Dibling's leg (it did, but not much), the initial point of contact must have been most of the thickness of his lower leg outside the box - and he's got a chunky leg! That would be several centimetres at least. And yes, Dibling's leg remained in contact with Robertson's as he rolled over the top of it, and maybe some part of the area of contact was eventually just above the line rather than in front of it; but that doesn't matter - the instant of first contact is supposed to be what they look for. A few centimetres is a tight margin, yes, but it's not indistinguishable, too close to call; heck, we're often seeing offisde decisions given now for alleged margins barely a tenth of this!

Mo Salah spurning a few chances to complete his hattrick also tickles the Luck-o-Meter. As does his foolishly getting himself a booking for taking his shirt off to celebrate converting the penalty! And, presumably because of that booking, BPS ultimately accorded him only a 1-point lead over Szoboszlai - so, he might have scored two goals and secured the win for Liverpool but only have received 2 bonus points!!  I think that would have had pitchfork-toting mobs converging on FPL Headquarters. But oh my good god! I discover the FPL gnomes have again conducted a surreptitious manipulation of the BPS numbers very late in the day (possibly after the Gameweek had officially 'closed'?), somehow contriving to award Szoboszlai a whopping 11 extra credits, to catapult him above Salah (??!!) to the maximum bonus points spot. These shenanigans have got to STOP! Time to reach for those pitchforks....

At least the weekend concluded with an utterly uncontroversial match between Southampton and Manchester United. It is nice to be reassured that they can still happen. Unfortunately, it has become such a rarity this season that you feel any ref who manages it should receive a special award in thanks - a No Fuck-Ups Trophy.

It's probably too much to hope that we might be able to hand out another one for Monday night's game between Newcastle and West Ham...

Yep - that was just a little too much to hope for. The final game of the weekend would probably have turned out very differently if Isak's fine breakthrough goal had been allowed to stand; the offiside call against him looked very, very fine (not one that could have been made accurately with the naked eye by the linesman); and, on the highlights I saw, no justificatory VAR graphic was ever shown, so I'm not sure if it even was reviewed. Late in the game, Callum Wilson had a very strong penalty shout after being bundled over by Mavorpanos - but this was one of those where VAR seemed afraid to question the original decision. At the moment, there is a ridiculous level of 'policy bias' towards allowing the original on-pitch decision to stand in all circumstances; there is no room for that kind of slanting of the process - sometimes, often, the referee is wrong and needs to be corrected (or, at least, encouraged to reconsider). With the VAR team being so timid in most of these instances, the bar for questioning the original call being set so absurdly high, there is basically no point in having VAR at all.

There were some fantastic goals this weekend: Partey, Hutchinson, Iwobi, and a couple each from Cunha and Maddison. Also - again - a few more unexpected goalscorers, like Porro and (even more unexpected!) Wann-Bissaka. Also penalty stops from Henderson and Kelleher, and several other impressive saves, the pick of the crop being Martinez's late game-saver against Schlupp.

I wouldn't count the Spurs win at The Etihad as a surprise result, since they do have quite a record of turning over Pep - although the margin of victory, the contemptuous ease of it was something of a surprise (particularly given how poor Spurs had been last time out). Ipswich's home draw against United was entirely predictable too, since it was unrealistic to expect Amorim to turn around their dismal season overnight. However, Wolves's win against Fulham and West Ham's against Liverpool, Palace's draw at Villa, and Southampton nearly taking points off Liverpool at Anfield must all be considered upsets of the form book.

Recently out-of-favour-with-the-gaffer Maddison and disappointing Porro, forgotten men Emerson and Wann-Bissaka, and Ismaila Sarr and Enzo Fernandez all made the 'Team of the Week' -  so, you know it was a weird gameweek!!

Still, not a week with a huge amount of out-of-the-ordinary excellence or clumsiness from players; but.... oh, my god, a terrible performance from VAR, with a few incredibly tight and possibly dubious offsides ruling out crucial goals, several at least 'contentious' penalty calls, and 4 red card decisions that were plain WRONG! That, I'm afraid gets the week up to an 8 out of 10 on the Luck-o-Meter.