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Premier League regression
Seeing the recent article on Prick of the week and the previous mailbox where someone mentioned the goals from Premier League Years 2005-06, are there any legit arguments left to dispute the fact that the quality of the Premier league has gone down gradually since the 2000’s?
Now I know this might come across as pure nostalgia and knee-jerky due to VAR and what not, but I genuinely fail to see how anyone can argue, with a straight face, that football in general, and Premier League in particular, has regressed quite a bit in the last 5-10 years.
Thoughts?
Bucky Bent (Bangalore, India)
OPINION: Poch would join elite group by beating Man City or Dortmund
Mourinho a Juve no-go
As a Juventus supporter I would kindly invite Matt Stead to eff off. Even if this article was a joke, we don’t joke about such things…
If Juve wanted a practically guaranteed Serie A title playing slightly dull football, we could just get Allegri back. It’s no secret that his ‘firing’ was very amicable, he’s still on excellent terms with Agnelli and he would be happy to return. He would be a better fit than Mourinho, any success would last beyond the second season, and the football would be certainly less dull. That’s before even considering Mou’s past at Inter.
With respect to Pirlo, he isn’t doing great, but that’s to be (and was) expected by both the club and the fans. Juventus are the only one of Italy’s top clubs to have changed managers, they also changed a third of the squad, offloading a lot of older, higher-paid players for younger (and cheaper, but also more inexperienced) ones. That was the club’s choice, as was having a tiny core squad with only 3 strikers, and ostracizing Khedira for half a season. All of that without any preseason or any significant mid-season breaks to be able to get his ideas across. Added to this, Dybala has been injured or not in full form for practically the whole season; Chiellini, De Ligt and Arthur have been out for long periods and half the squad have been out for 2-3 weeks with covid (after which it’s particularly difficult to get straight back up to full form).
Pirlo will miss out on the Serie A (hey you got to occasionally leave some scraps to the others, and Inter will win it mostly on the merits of Juve boy Conte). But winning the Champion’s League was not a real expectation (Ronaldo or not, you need a stronger squad for that). A realistic target for Juve was make the quarters and see what happens from there. And for all that Juve gifted Porto their goals, I’m not forgetting that the decisive freekick goal was from a non-foul, nor the blatant penalty not given to Ronaldo in the last minute of the first leg, so I’m not going to beat up on Pirlo about exiting one round earlier than was otherwise probable. Based on the recent uptick in play, Juve should finish a strong 2nd and win the Coppa Italia having also won the Supercoppa, and have a strong platform to build on for next year. And if Pirlo still misses out on the Champions League places and Coppa Italia, I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge a change is necessary (but, let me emphasise once again, not Mourinho).
James, Switzerland
Chelsea – Champions League semi-finalists
Gyms and Hairdressers are back open and Chelsea are in the Champions League Semi Finals, not a bad 48 hours at all.
Honestly I’m not even to upset we lost the game on the night, Mehdi Taremi scored an absolute worldie which meant absolutely nothing in terms of the overall result, memories of Christian Benteke vs Man Utd when he scored his sensational overhead kick (stunning goal, but didn’t impact result I mean)
Interesting how FC Porto set up as if they were defending the 2-0 lead though, it felt like Christian Pulisic was fouled tonight more times than Eden Hazard was in his whole Chelsea career.
Mikey, CFC
Is it ok to watch PSG vs Bayern esp after watching rather slow first half of Chelsea Vs Porto?
Feel slightly guilt in abandoning my team (Chelsea) to watch a match with more flair.
Can anyone blame me…. wonder what other Chelsea fans are doing now?
B CFC
Liverpool silver linings
The thought of that PSG team against Liverpool’s high defensive line softens the blow of the likely Real defeat. I suspect Kabak/Phillips might find Mbappe/Neymar ‘challenging’.
Aidan, Lfc (obviously if we somehow get through Real I have full confidence that Chelsea and PSG/City are there for the taking)
VAR thoughts
On MC’s idea for better VAR offsides, there are several problems. Initially, an automatic system that uses trackers on the players would also need one in the ball so that the system knows when the ball was played and thus if a player is offside. The problem here is that the ball gets kicked, hard, many many times during a match. Not sure of your experience with technology but I’m betting the ball tracker breaks, a lot, and probably without anyone knowing until an offside goal goes in without the alarm going off. There is also an issue with active players, I imagine it would be near impossible for a computer to weigh the nuances of when a player is active or not (which a linesman can do instantly), so a human review would also be required which kind of negates the whole idea of an automatic system in the first place. Finally there is the same problem that all the VAR offside solutions share, all we would really be doing is moving where the line is drawn.
The problem most people seem to have with VAR offsides is the minute precision which is applied, ‘offside by a toe, are you taking the piss?’. However if we decide the line is drawn where the feet are planted then decisions will still come down to millimetres difference. If we say it’s through the centre of the head it will still come down to millimetres. If we say there should be a 10cm margin for error then its still a millimetre decision if the player is 9.9cm offside or 10.1cm offside. Even the frame rate argument ‘if we used high speed cameras…’ comes down to millimetres. They all boil down to the same issue of accuracy because in the end you’re either offside or you’re not.
The current rule is basically ‘no part of an attacking player which can play the ball should be past any part of the last defending player which can play the ball’. That’s about as simple as it can be surely, forget the arms but everything else need to be onside. There is even a grace period built in to see how the attacking phase plays out before an offside decision is made. None of the solutions I’ve heard are better than that and all solutions arrive at the same problem eventually.
So what needs to happen is for us all to get the fuck over it. Either we want accuracy or not. If we do then leave VAR as is and try to speed up the decision time, if not then just scrap it and let the linesmen make mistakes once in a while
Dave, Manchester
I like MC’s proposed solution to the VAR offside debate – as featured in the Mailbox. I genuinely do! Putting little transmitters in players boots, and judging offside on that – in real time – would work quite well. We could have a hooter as well as the traffic light system.
While it is an overly technological solution to a pretty mundane problem – far too expensive for anything other than top-end professional football – so are goal line tech, and especially VAR. Plus, as a solution to offside, it is actually more scientifically clinical than VAR could ever hope to be. And I do mean that genuinely. Honestly!
So why the fuck not…
Dave Tickner’s ‘Prick of the Week’ resonates somewhere in my mind, in that, I wonder if any of this would be even remotely necessary were it not for all the bloody moaning and groaning about referees and their failure to become superhuman… But we are too far gone down the road of chasing ourselves up our own arseholes, in pursuit of an impossible perfection, to stop now. Onwards and upwards, I say.
It would not be a rule – judging offside by foot position – that could translate to matches that do not have all the kit, so we would end up with different offside rules at different levels of football. However, realistically, trying to retain a consistent code for all levels, in a world that includes VAR and goal line tech, is a fools errand anyways.
The best part of it will be watching a Sam Allardyce side win the Premier League – via a record low in the ‘Goals Against’ column, and record highs in clean sheets and favourable VAR offside decisions – pioneering a new formation that involves a defensive line of eight Cossack Dancers rampaging up the pitch, supplying a forward line of Kevin’s Nolan and Davies.
DD, MUFC, Liverpool
There has been a lot written about what is wrong with VAR and how to improve it etc etc.The simplest improvement is in the cameras.
Currently, they are shot at 50fps which means a player travelling 30kph can move up to 15cm between frames.
I also follow MotoGP where the bikes travel up to 350kph. They use cameras with 2500fps and with these cameras you can see the groove on the tires of bikes travelling 350kph(when slowed down obviously).
Surely the global behemoth that is the premier league can invest in better cameras with a high fps rate….. they make them up to 10000fps.
This may not resolve all issues, but it would be alot clearer and speed up decisions, the thing most people complain about without changing the rules or anything about the game or VAR system.
JUST BUY BETTER CAMERAS!!!
Liam
Very quick mail on offsides and var. As pointed out before, with the speed of the game a single frame can drastically change the position of people/limbs etc so I don’t think my thoughts on this would fix anything but how about instead of measuring the position of any limb that can score, measure offside by the part of the body that touches the ball next.
Just a thought.
Aodan (cfc)
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