RateTheRef

Not a good day at the office today for Pawson. Zero attempt at times to play the advantage which was frustrating. Many fouls missed as well. Major incident involving handball shout against Soucek is a stonewall penalty, if it doesn't hit the hand its going in the goal, very poor from VAR. Special mention to the 2 linesmen who were very busy and very correct except the disallowed goal by VAR which was very tight.

It was a definite handball and penalty. Very poor from VAR, brought into disrepute again.  A long rest for Swarbrick.

Wasn’t Swarbrick the manager in charge  of VAR under Riley ? If so I would have expected much better he has missed a few obvious things in his short time on VAR duties

Howler from VAR. Absolute shocker. Yet another wrong non intervention from Neil Swarbrick. Been a VAR for only a few weeks yet has already had loads of controversy. It’s no surprise VAR was useless under Mike Riley if the person coaching its use can’t use it.

The only impact Swarbrick has had is one goal Dissalowed for offside and one for the ball being out of play


Swarbrick was a poor referee and is now a poor VAR.


Pawson can’t be expected to see it.

I thought Swarbrick was generally a steady referee.

I don't think we should conflate the roles of Head of VAR with being a VAR official as each position requires different things - you could be good at one but not the other, or vice versa. Or of course poor at both! I presume some roles have simply been reassigned since Webb came in. I believe he brought new people into some VAR management positions so perhaps Swarbrick taking on VAR duties is a compromise of a kind.

One mitigation could be that Swarbrick presumably has much less experience as an actual VAR than most of the others, given he wasn't used in that role for 4 and a half years.

My concern since Webb came in has always been VAR would go too far back to the high bar and never interfering so Webb needs to be careful that the VARs do come in where it is relevant.

Problem with VAR is the VAR official. Two other awful decisions today, one at Arsenal and another in the Palace game, the latter admitted by PGMOL. What can you say?

Quote from: Failed Ref on Sat 11 Feb 2023 22:50

Problem with VAR is the VAR official. Two other awful decisions today, one at Arsenal and another in the Palace game, the latter admitted by PGMOL. What can you say?

There an article in the Mail (health warning needed) by Chris Foy, who is PGMOL employed, admitting to the error at Arsenal too. Lee Mason (another one prone to a howler) apparently forgot to put the lines down to check the offsides - absolutely inexcusable. You have literally one job…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11740619/VAR-Lee-Mason-FORGOT-draw-offside-lines-reviewing-Ivan-Toneys-controversial-equaliser.html

Lee Mason, Mike Dean and Neil Swarbrick have one job which they do once/twice a week. They make mistakes in about 75% of those. Any other job they would have been fired by now.

So in the article it states that for the Brighton “disallowed” goal VAR John Brooks drew the lines against the incorrect player , for the Brentford “goal” VAR Lee Mason forgot to draw the lines and had he drawn them they would have shown it was offside im sorry but that is very poor VAR

todays mistakes are undoing the all the promising work that Webb had implemented over his first few weeks , last week I felt more confident than ever that we were going in the right direction. Today sadly I feel like it’s gone 3 steps backwards hopefully Webb will nip this in the bud quickly and get it back on track

I go back to a point i made in another thread there is more than one person in the var booth, so it is a team thing.