Entertainment Over Integrity: The Broadcasters and PGMOL Don’t Care About Fair Play, Just the Product

FREE READ: Does anyone trust anyone or anything anymore?

This, above, according to the PGMOL, including the VAR on duty, is just two players coming into contact.

Two players going in high, and two players coming into contact.

Stuart Attwell, the VAR, said:

“There’s a coming together. Mac Allister coming in, he turns his body. The ball is high, they both come in high. I don’t think there is enough evidence there for a penalty kick.”

Now, it’s actually just Doku’s boot – the very high boot – coming together with Mac Allister’s chest, but if you don’t want to give a clear decision, you can say anything.

I’ve heard people say that the still frame can be misleading, but it pretty much shows lots of key facts, such as Mac Allister’s feet being low to the ground, if not on the ground. His elbows are not out, but in. He’s turning away from getting a nasty injury. That it’s a genuine attempt to play the ball should have no bearing on it being a foul (but maybe saves a red card). Mac Allister is a defensive pose, seeing the six studs coming.

[Edit: In fairness, Sky now have an article pointing out the ludicrousness of the situation, complete with image below. “It’s extremely unsatisfactory for Liverpool fans looking at that explanation. Two things for me: they say that Doku gets the ball, but on those super slo-mos you can see that Mac Allister gets there first … So it comes off Mac Allister's chest, catches Doku's boot and then goes away.” I’ve also just read that Webb says “The ball is too low to head” – yet is chest height now too low to head a ball, and no longer too high for a foot?!]

Here’s a picture of two players about to come into contact with each other; it’s just inevitable contact.

It’s a coming together.

And …

… Don’t literally all fouls end up with two players coming into contact with each other?

Did the ball brush Harald Schumacher’s arm? Did he make contact? If he did, would that be okay? He’s presumably jumping wildly to stop the ball, and gets it wrong.

The above is an extreme example.

But here’s the something similar.

How about the same VAR, Stuart Attwell, and this, which he didn’t punish? The ref? Mike Dean.

Watch the final angle of that and do well to hold your dinner down.

Sent off? No. Booked? No.

Well done Attwell! Don’t worry that Díaz could have ended up in intensive care. (As long as we book players for taking their shirts off, no bad injuries will occur in football.)

I mean, it’s only a knee and a forearm in the face.

I’ve also read that refs don’t give fewer penalties later in games; that there’s no different bar for a decision later in the game. Except this is not the case, as I showed last week:

Penalties generally drop towards the end of games, but not for all clubs. Most of the better teams get more later on, as you’d expect, as they’re wearing teams down or dominating. Weaker teams are crumbling at this point.

When it comes to very early penalties plus very late penalties (“vital time”), Liverpool are only above Sheffield United in the past eight years for vital time penalties per season.

Similarly, when it comes to VAR giving a foul penalty to Liverpool, it’s been two in five years.

Two in five years.

#LiVARpool, indeed.

Before I continue with this article below, more on that can be found here.

Entertainment Over Integrity

When Bruno Fernandes should have been sent off for Man United at the weekend, the ITV commentator said we don’t want to see that, which presumably meant “ruining the game”.

As such, having a good game to watch – the broadcast, the spectacle, the viewing figures – are all more important now than reaching the correct decisions; having a tighter title race is more important than reaching the correct decisions.

Would any single commentator in the entire English sports broadcasting system have said the same had Harry Kane been denied a penalty when kicked in the chest in a World Cup semi-final, or if an Argentine wasn’t sent off early in the match as “we don’t want the game to be ruined”?

Of course not. We want the laws applied, fairly and consistently, and red-card offences should result in red cards. It’s simple, even if you’re biased, to want that standard.

Sky’s reaction at half-time after Luis Díaz was incorrectly ruled offside at Spurs was to fudge the issue. Dither, dally, and cover-up. No getting to the heart of the most controversial disallowed goal perhaps in history, given the way it unfolded.

Mike Dean seems to be there to prop up the product, with his “the ref got it right there” mantra. Great analysis, Mike. A controversial ref, Dean has simply proved to be the oldest of the old boys’ network, protect your mates (he once admitted as much). That’s how you get the gig.

Entertainment Over Integrity. Product comes first.

And as for who gets charged for FFP breaches and who doesn’t, and in what timeframe, it seems a shitshow. How much faith is slowly dripping away in the integrity of the league and its officials, and also the media? I can’t wait for the late summer, when everyone finds out in what position they finished.

I believe in FFP and clubs staying within their means, but a bunch of preschool kids could have made a better job of implementing the rules and handing out timely punishments. (Indeed, while I agree that it will take years to deal with Man City’s 115 charges, why not prosecute the first few/easiest ones first?)

The BBC loves a plucky underdog story, especially in the FA Cup it covers as if it’s the World Cup; but when Coventry beat Wolves it was on a rival channel, so featured low on their Football page. Fuck those Coventry guys.

Officials now just make it up as they go along, with cognitive dissonance and post-hoc rationalisation, of which Howard Webb is the master. They’ve given him his own show on Sky, with that well-renowned bulldog of a hard-hitting journalist, to ask the tough questions, Michael Owen.

We’ll admit mistakes, they seem to be saying, but convenient ones.

Or ones that are technically unavoidable, like Díaz being offside, but only after maybe one, maybe two, maybe three or four attempts to massage the truth about what happened before the boorish blokes are exposed as bullshit artists.

Now we have the explanation of the Alexis Mac Allister / Jeremy Doku incident is prime post-hoc rationalisation full of doublespeak. As ever, hearing the VAR and then Webb explain it just makes it worse.

The ref, Michael Oliver, was behind Mac Allister, so could not clearly see the challenge. A good VAR would surely have thought, in the final minute of a vital game, that the ref should have a clear view of a potentially title-deciding decision.

No.

I mean, if there’s ever a time to use VAR, it’s then. But we know VAR is used to protect refs, and if a ref is called to the screen, he will go with the VAR, 99% of the time.

It’s not exactly an honest, clear and transparent process when you can guess in advance how they’ll fudge it.

VAR:

“So there’s clear contact on the ball by Doku. There’s a coming together. Mac Allister coming in, he turns his body. The ball is high, they both come in high. I don’t think there is enough evidence there for a penalty kick.”

Mac Allister is jumping, thinking of heading the ball, but turns as he sees danger.

Isn’t the the high foot the vital differentiating factor? Is jumping with your feet low to the ground the same as jumping karate-style?

Just asking for a friend.

Still, with the terrible Paul Tierney, it’s a good job Liverpool don’t get Tierney and Attwell all the time.

Oh.

I’m tired to death of having to analysis this shit, but the doublespeak and doubling-down just insults our intelligence and leaves a sour taste of a corrupted product, if not full-conspiratorial corruption. And no one else seems to examine any data around this, so if they don’t, I’ll have to continue to do so.

I mean, Webb and Attwell’s statements read like a justifications from people who have never even watched football, let alone played it.

Webb:

“[It was] a genuine attempt to play the ball . . . with both players coming into contact with each other as a result. Doku is just about entitled to challenge for the ball and, despite making contact with Mac Allister’s chest, he makes contact with the ball.”

It’s not two players coming into contact with each other, is it?

Not when one is doing so with a raised boot; or can we now appeal Sadio Mané’s raised boot, outside the area to play the ball, that caught a stooping Ederson, whom Mané didn’t even know was there (as Ederson was way out of his goal and not where you’d expect him), in the head? That was a red and a three-game ban.

[Edit: by Webb’s new logic, it was too low to head, and so not a foul by Mané. That’s the kind of weird world we’re now in.]

To me, looking back and using Webb’s logic, it’s now just “a genuine attempt to play the ball . . . with both players coming into contact with each other as a result”.

(Or did Mac Allister have to have visible, nasty cuts to his chest? That didn’t seem to matter when Cody Gakpo got his chest cut open last season by Tyrone Mings, on what was only given as a yellow card, but still given as a foul and a yellow card.)

I need to ask, then:

1) What is a high boot?

2) A dangerous high boot?

3) Do you need to get the ball? No.

4) Can the follow-through after a clean tackle be a foul? Yes. We saw it twice with Liverpool players in the Man United game. (Joe Gomez and Conor Bradley.) Curtis Jones was sent off for this, and it cost Liverpool three points as the first and most damaging of three bad decisions that day. (Contact with the ball seems to be utterly random in terms of when it’s applied, and a way for officials to send off who they don’t like, and not send off or penalise who they do; ditto follow-throughs.)

5) Are you “just about entitled” to go for a high ball with your foot – about five feet in the air – in a crowded area? No. Never.

6) An overhead kick in the box that connects with someone’s chest. Is it a foul? Of course. Probably a booking. Harsh to be a red card, but it’s dangerous, as there’s a chance of injuring an opponent, even one you can’t see.

7) Can they not see that Doku is scared of the header and so goes with his boot? Can’t they see Mac Allister it turning away as he’s realised the other guy is doing something really strange and leading with his foot?

8) Even in England, any tackle that makes contact with an opponent almost anywhere above the ankle, winning the ball or not, is given as a foul. It’s a foul at the knee, even more of a foul at the groin. At the chest it’s about as much of a foul as it can be. It doesn’t have to be a red card if an honest attempt to play the ball and there’s not excessive force, and there were neither, so no one is asking for a red card. But it’s a foul. It’s a foul. What it is is a foul. A foul.

9) I was just thinking back about Eric Cantona and the dickhead in the crowd coming into contact with each other.

10) Mac Allister starts to take evasive action when he sees a high karate-style boot heading for him, and that somehow makes it his own fault.

Webb thinks it’s fine, in his “nothing to see here” manner.

It’s all in the data I’ve shared for years; the weird officiating patterns.

Man City get another let off, via VAR; and on this case, Oliver had a real stinker.

City really got at him in the past – really went after him – and now he’s timid when he does their games. This season he’s just caving to City pressure, it seems.

Arsenal were hard-done by here, but Havertz is escaping red cards and the reward to the VAR who didn’t give Martin Ødegaard’s handball at Anfield as a penalty was to do the reverse fixture.

11) And as well, from the weekend, no second booking for Bruno Fernandes for a foul that Lee Dixon said wasn’t quite a red but was a clear yellow.

https://twitter.com/davolaar/status/1769434433071796607?s=48

On the Mac Allister/Doku one, the main ex-refs not tied to the media who ‘own’ the product were utterly perplexed.

Keith Hackett told Total Sport Merseyside that it was a “nailed on” penalty.

"I find it difficult to understand why referees at the elite level should not see that, first of all, as a foul," he added. "It's that close between either a yellow or a red [card], but not to give a penalty is completely unbelievable."

On X he wrote: “This is a clear penalty and yellow card.”

Mark Clattenberg, no fan of Liverpool, said:

“Liverpool should have been awarded a stoppage-time penalty against Manchester City but this is the problem in the Premier League right now – referees are making mistakes in matches and not being helped by their VARs.

“The ball bounces up. Alexis Mac Allister moves towards it. Jeremy Doku’s foot is high. He catches Mac Allister in the chest.

“Outside of the box, this would have resulted in a free-kick, every day of the week. Just because it happened inside the box does not suddenly transform it into a clean challenge when Mac Allister might be left playing connect the dots on his chest on Monday morning.”

That’s 100% rational, normal, and makes sense. There’s no doublespeak.

And these are not refs known to favour Liverpool in any way.

The PMGOL, Sky, et al – blah blah blah, coming together.

We did learn from Webb that Kai Havertz should have been sent off for a second time this season in which he wasn’t. That’s pretty good going.

Who was the ref who didn’t send off Havertz for a wild lunge by the touchline vs Newcastle? Stuart Attwell! The man is there to not give decisions; good work if you can find it.

As I said last week, he’s given Brighton three penalties as a VAR (out of the eight he’s given in his career), and also given Brighton as many foul penalties whilst a VAR (two) as all the VARs have given Liverpool in 180 Premier League games.

I hadn’t realised until today that he was the VAR who didn’t send off Sanchez for Schumachering Díaz, but I assume you’d want to put a lot of money on Brighton when Attwell’s involved.

But it would be too controversial to call this, a clear penalty to Liverpool, a clear penalty to Liverpool, if more worried about the product.

In virtually all the big games this season, Liverpool have been shafted by the officials. Newcastle away (harsh early red); Spurs away (harsh early red, wrongly disallowed goal, harsh second red); Arsenal at home (clear handball in box); Man City at home (clear penalty in last minute not given); Chelsea in the League Cup final (most bizarre way to disallow a goal); and now in the cup, Man United away (Fernandes escapes the most obviously second yellow).

Ibrahima Konaté also got sent off at Arsenal for two yellows, but rivals aren’t picking up those second yellow cards. They’re not really picking up reds, either.

And to get a penalty at Brighton, Liverpool had to have two players fouled. To get a penalty against Man City earlier in the game, Darwin Núñez had kicked onto the roof of the new Anfield Road stand.

Decisions are increasingly about what’s convenient.

Entertainment Over Integrity.

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