The All New Unworthy Of It's Own Thread AFC General STUFF Thread

[Panda]

17 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t want hearts to win the league.

I think Hearts challenging for the title has been great for Scottish football.

I don't think we (as in Aberdeen) need them to win it for it to still be great though.

It'll actually be a negative as they'll bank a huge sum of money. Even if they don't make the Champions League group stage, I think they get €4m just for losing in the play-off then €8m for the Europa League group stage.

We're both trying to find the next Lewis Ferguson or Claudia Braga - we'd now be competing with the league winners who are in Europe and have deeper pockets. 

So nah, I don't want them to win it.

However, I have a sneaky feeling they will. And if they do they deserve it. And at least the consolation will be Celtic not winning five-in-a-row.

[The.Moog]

That last night is not a penalty, never in a million years.

Yes the hands up, but you have to raise your arms to jump, that’s natural, its not fuckin Riverdance.

The well boys arm is then knocked by the jumping Tim (its not an elbow either, the Tim jumped with and into him - he actually elbowed the Well lad in the guts too so that could easily have been given as a foul too).

That knock to the arm moves his hand towards the trajectory of the ball but its still obviously headed clear.

Anyone who’s ever played football knows a ball only flies through the air like that when its been cleanly headed. No ball could or would fly like that off the palm of your hand. Its just impossible.

Its a scandalous call, even for Scotland, one that would never have been given at the other end, and one that was given either because of:

Blatant cheating to engineer a last day decider, or

Bottling officials too scared of the flak they knew they’d get from those unhinged weegie minkers if it wasn’t given.

Its how football works up here. Always has been and its why the rest of us are all just wasting our time…

[tlg1903]

It's handball all day long for me.  You can't go to head the ball with your hand in between the ball and your head and not expect to concede a foul.  

[Jupiter]

If he did handle it, he didn't gain an advantage from handling it.

[RicoS321]

22 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

It's handball all day long for me.  You can't go to head the ball with your hand in between the ball and your head and not expect to concede a foul.  

He didn't go to head the ball with his hand in between the ball and his head though.

[tlg1903]

2 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

He didn't go to head the ball with his hand in between the ball and his head though.

Of course he didn't intend it but it's what happened.  My point was if you did intend it it would be a foul. That his hand was in that position was not due to a foul so intent is completely irrelevant.  It was, and, to my eye anyway, a foul and a penalty.  Hell, even my jambo neighbour has accepted (grudgingly) that it was the correct decision. 

[Mason89]

It’s good that VAR has cleared up the rules and ended all the controversy 

[The.Moog]

8 hours ago, tlg1903 said:

Of course he didn't intend it but it's what happened.  My point was if you did intend it it would be a foul. That his hand was in that position was not due to a foul so intent is completely irrelevant.  It was, and, to my eye anyway, a foul and a penalty.  Hell, even my jambo neighbour has accepted (grudgingly) that it was the correct decision. 

Go read the rules then. Just cause the ball hits your hand (and i’m not convinced it does given the way the ball pinged off him exactly like a clean header does) doesn’t make it a penalty and in that situation under the rules - if interpreted correctly - that is not a penalty…

Edited 6 hours ago by The.Moog

[Don Julio]

Just shows that the rules and VAR are both shite and need binning.

Perhaps it mean if Hearts fluff it, we may get a real crack at changing things due to the uproar?

[RicoS321]

28 minutes ago, Don Julio said:

Just shows that the rules and VAR are both shite and need binning.

Perhaps it mean if Hearts fluff it, we may get a real crack at changing things due to the uproar?

There won't be an uproar though, that would only occur if it was the other way round. 

The rules around handball were changed specifically for VAR. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the deliberate handball rule. However, if you have still shots and video evidence then the closer you can have to it being "any touch on the hand", then the easier it is to identify handballs, to the extent that the obvious trajectory would be for an algorithm to do it. That is the goal of the VAR guys, ever increasing involvement and automation. Of course, in the interim, it benefits the big teams. It takes the existing bias in the game, and amplifies it, because there are more opportunities to give decisions and more procrastination, and thus doubts, over decision making. You can (incorrectly!) make the case for it being a Tim's pen, as @tlg1903 has, but only an absolute fool would try and pretend that a penalty would have been given at the other end of the pitch. 

To think that we had people suggesting VAR was essential because it would stop the scum cheating!

There was an official from down South on BBC Scotland yesterday, who correctly dissected why VAR should not have been involved. His answer was more cameras, and less VAR involvement. He repeated the absolutely ridiculous statement that "VAR was only meant to be for the really obvious mistakes"! I nearly punched the radio. As was pointed out by people like me well before VAR existed: there is no definition of obvious, ever; if we could agreement on the indefinable, there would not be enough decisions to ever merit the expense of the technology and additional cameras to make it work (which is why we don't have goal line technology in Scotland). When I pointed this out years ago and asked for any decision that met the threshold of absolutely obvious error, I suggested that there is always one, and only one, incident that everyone goes back to and seems to be the entire reason for VARs implementation. Lo and behold, the chap on the radio went all the way back to Thierry Henry versus Ireland to make his absolutely woeful case for "better VAR". 

It's a failed experiment, that was always going to be. In the next year or two, it'll be expanded to checking corners. Then it'll be free kicks and yellow cards. Edit: with advertising alongside each call.

Edited 2 hours ago by RicoS321

[Mason89]

I always blame Frank Lampards goal against Germany for it 

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, Mason89 said:

I always blame Frank Lampards goal against Germany for it 

Nah, that was responsible for goal line technology. They solved that one. A technology that works perfectly, because it gets used once or twice a season, and it's conclusive.