Remember that the pundits are there purely to draw attention. It’s why you get ex players like Paul Merson and Steve Nicol wittering on about nonsense. They are being paid to have a bad take because bad takes get social media clicks.

And the more it is done the more others do it. I understand why you’re tired.

Modric vs Spain in 2012. He wasn’t just better than every Spanish player on the pitch, he was singlehandedly better than the entire Spanish midfield. That was the game I knew he was off to Madrid.

I think retroactively stripping titles is the only punishment worthwhile. What’s it to Man City if they even get forcefully relegated? They have all those titles, success, new fans, and prestige already. It sends a signal that it is OK to buy success and get all those wins because all that will happen is you will spend one season in the championship before being back.

Being able to say to City fans that they only won the league 1 or 2 times because the rest of it they cheated and were disqualified is the only way the punishment can have any meanings. This history books won’t care otherwise.

And from what I can see with Everton it was at least they tried to get out of it and were hurt by the pandemic. City and Chelsea did it deliberately. The punishment has to be heavier.

Because it’s not the correct result. All technology has a margin of error. That line you are drawing is a guess based on the angle of the pitch, where you judge the exact point where a shoulder ends and an arm begins, and so on. It’s also not ever the right frame. Nobody knows the exact point when a ball is played forward because that has not even been defined, and even if it was measuring is near impossible even with a chip in the ball. VAR cameras, even the high speed ones, have a frame rate too low (check the Chelsea Spurs VAR commentary and you can see that the ball is even blurry that’s how bad it is).

All of these add up. A player running at 8m/s with a frame rate of 100Hz cameras (much better than the ones used) leaves a margin of error of 8cm. Add that players could be going in opposite directions and the margin of error is over 1ft.

Everyone here saying it is either on or off is not recognising the limits of technology. Margins of error have to be baked into the system. We’re treating the tech as perfect and just the use that has failed. That’s just not right.

But what if the line was 5cm wide, and if you are in that line you go to the onfield decision with VAR saying “too close to call” and instead focusing on the clear and obvious ones?

I think feet are the worst way to judge because they are the fastest moving part of the body and there are two of them. An attacker could be onside then offside then onside then offside then onside again before finally being offside as both players running alternates who has a foot furthest forward.

Also you will have humans that have trained to be able to instinctively judge offside (I played that video quiz, it’s damn hard!) for potentially a decade. And now you are asking them to unlearn all of that? It’s insane.

Wrong solution to the problem. If you are going to draw a hard line on any scoring part of the body you’ll always get the weirs situation where someone can be offside and then onside before being offside again as the feet move back and forward.

The problem is the technology trying to draw imperfect lines. The lines should have a margin of error. If they cross within the margin of error then go with the on field decision and mark it “too close to call”.

VAR is supposed to be for the clear and obvious. Not hyper regulating every mm of the pitch.

Seth Johnson was class before the injuries. My first choice CM3 signing too.

I thought Palace played well, and especially in the first half began to get worried that AngeBall had been worked out. The width of the 3 midfielders made it hard to go through or round with areas squeezed out. We def missed Udogie’s involvement and no shade on Ben but we looked better with Royal there.

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People are not talking about him so maybe it’s just me but I thought that Will Hughes was fkn immense in that game. He may look like a bargain bin Santa but he really ran the Palace midfield and was so good in driving the team forward. I think with Bissouma having to be careful not to get a yellow and miss the Chelsea game it really gave Hughes the licence to be physical.

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I’m pretty pissed off with Ayew’s tackling, especially in the first half. I’m all for physical games as I think it makes the sport better, but he was far too often just going in on the back of player’s legs. It was cynical and pathetic and the ref should have booked him earlier after it happened the 3rd time.

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Disagree on the VAR tho. The angle of the ball when it comes off his chest (no arm at this point) is going diagonally to the right (from the goalside cam). When it gets to where his wrist is then it sharply changes direction to be going down and to the left. It also has a lot more spin on it. No idea how VAR didn’t catch that quickly (btw clear and obvious in only for when VAR wants to intervene on a mistake / miss by the ref, not for checking things like this).

Well done boys, good process.