Week 36: Dier Decisions Are Taking The Piss
For better or worse, since the Premier League was founded in 1992, it has been an ever-growing juggernaut of unmatched sporting and commercial success, with broadcasting and sponsorship deals worth several billion, as well as a steady influx of some of the world’s best(ish) players.
It is also widely regarded as being the best league in the world – although more often by people within it – because of the flowing pace of games and general entertainment value that attracts a vast overseas audience, as well as a widely held belief that anyone can beat anyone, although that is rarely the case in practice.
The new season has also got off to a bang thanks to the on-field part of the equation at least.
Last weekend saw 36 goals across the 10 games, including pre-season favourites for the title, Manchester City leaking five at home, Chelsea recovering from 0-3 to draw and a first for English football; a game at Brighton decided by a penalty awarded AFTER the final whistle.
Yet this bumper weekend seemed almost goal-shy when compared to the previous one with a flood of 44 goals including 14 in the first two games of the weekend as Leeds beat Fulham 4-3 and Everton defeated West Brom 5-2.
On goals alone, it couldn’t be better. Yet this has hardly been mentioned after a weekend that was totally dominated by discussions about one thing: handball. It’s a topic that threatens to undermine the league’s status in a season where it is already hamstrung by having to play in front of empty seats because of the coronavirus.
Where last season, VAR stole all the headlines, this year it is the new interpretation of handball that is ruining the game for fans and viewers alike. It’s not a new rule but rather the FIFA rule that came in at the time of the 2018 World Cup and is already used in Europe (Serie A and La Liga had three times as many penalties awarded for handball last season compared to the Premier League) but is only being used, as it is now by our referees, for the first time. This was because FIFA wanted all leagues to get in line rather than a steady trickle of compliance.
And what a mess it’s been already.
I must admit, I prefer my Premier League football fix in smaller doses so I’m more of a MOTD and MOTD 2 fan where the fast-forward button on iPlayer can be applied where necessary, this season especially so that I don’t have to listen to any more pretend crowd noise than is absolutely necessary. On Saturday however, with some time to kill, I tuned into the live screening of Crystal Palace versus Everton on Amazon Prime.
But it was far from prime viewing.
Despite watching any film on the platform uninterrupted, the same couldn’t be said for live football with constant delays and stoppages of the service. When it did work, I watched from twenty minutes in and stopped it at half-time, which couldn’t come soon enough.
In that time, I felt I’d watched a few minutes of poor football and at least fifteen minutes of reruns of the ball hitting Joel Ward’s arm. At one point it showed it around twenty consecutive times from multiple angles but it never changed; his arm was by his side and never moved, the ball struck it from a yard away and if that’s now a penalty (which the laws of the game say it is) then the game’s really gone.
The Premier League’s elder statesman, Roy Hodgson, agreed, calling it ‘totally unacceptable’ and said it was ‘killing the game of football.’
By then, we’d already had the ‘afters’ at the Amex which summed up the Premier League quite nicely; great entertainment somehow overshone by technology. The dramatic handball in the ninety-eighth minute wasn’t in dispute in this one but it did dredge up that old nonsense that these decisions ‘equal themselves out’ – which of course they don’t.
When Manchester United were given the penalty, some said that it was justice as they’d had one given against last week that was very similar. But we can’t keep a tally on errors and hope – or create – balance retrospectively. Where does it end? Do we say to a referee that ‘Southampton are minus 2 on bad decisions this season, so if you can correct at least half of it this week, that’d be great’? It doesn’t work anyway. What if the one that goes for you is the fifth goal in a 5-0 win, whereas the one that goes the other way is a last-minute equaliser?
On that note, on Sunday, the controversy at Spurs threatened to overshadow the whole weekend and even made Joel Ward look like Diego Maradona (before the drugs).
There was so much not to like. Eric Dier was adjudged to have handled when Andy Carroll’s header hit his arm. Dier was in mid-jump (have you ever tried putting your hands behind your back mid-jump?) and facing in the opposite direction. Not only did he not mean to handle it but didn’t even know he had. Worse still, he was so close (the rule says the ball ‘should have travelled some distance’) and he was pushed as it happened and from a dubious free-kick. As players everywhere will now do, Carroll ran after the referee calling for him to check the monitor (as he had also done moments earlier) as if it was a deliberate ploy. I don’t think it was but it will definitely become one if the rule remains as it is.
Jose Mourinho walked down the tunnel to show his disgust at the decision but it was the opposition’s manager, Steve Bruce, who really gave it both barrels despite his team benefitting from it. Bruce went one better than Hodgson, saying we’ve ‘lost the plot’ with the rule and that football was ‘losing its spectacle’ which is the bigger concern. Or should be.
Experts were vehement with their criticism. Clinton Morrison for one: “It’s a terrible decision. I would be going mad. VAR is ruining our game. It’s the law, I understand, but he is facing the other way.” He also said on BBC5 Live ‘At the end of the game I want to talk about football. Instead, we are talking about VAR and the handball rule.’ We want to watch football too, not replays. It comes to something when watching Eric Dier go for a piddle is infinitely more entertaining than thirty-three consecutive views of the ball accidentally hitting his arm.
And that’s part of the wee problem. The Premier League think that it’s all part of the package; the goals, the controversy, the personalities, and this makes it so unmissable. I’m not so sure.
Another comment on the BBC site made the point quite nicely when it said ‘Got an arm fetish? Want to see numerous replays of footballs hitting them, followed by some nonsense decision-making? Then this is the league for you.’
Not exactly a marketing slogan to lead with, is it? More worryingly was the fan input with one, from Alex, standing out. ‘I’ve supported Spurs for 30 years – but VAR is making me want to stop watching football altogether.’
Some harsh non-Spurs fans pointed out that Tottenham should have scored 4 or 5 goals before the penalty anyway, so in some warped way, it was their own fault but that is a tiny point that misses a far bigger one. This technology was introduced to get the decisions right – yet at least 90% of those watching think they got it wrong. All the delays, re-runs and arguments yet we are no further forward. Arguably we’re further back.
The obvious point that was also made was that it wasn’t VAR, but the laws of the game – and lawmakers – that were to blame. But VAR is amplifying it in a way that you don’t get at other levels of the game. It makes us not only scrutinise the match officials and decisions far more but also highlights how absurd the rule is to everyone; from every conceivable angle. Over and over again.
Imagine having your biggest mistakes shown over and over again back to you. In fact, don’t imagine – just watch repeated playbacks of the PM’s daily COVID briefings.
On that subject, the Premier League has also been in the news as they have become the new ‘Bank of Mom & Dad’ for football. The Prime Minister keeps referring to them when talking about ‘looking after football as a whole’ and seems confident that a handout to the EFL will be agreed soon. Then they will look at ‘all sports’ said Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden. I presume he means the government will look at all sports, not ask the Premier League to help them all out. But you never know.
It’s a difficult one. As Sean Dyche eloquently put it, ‘they don’t ask Tesco to help out the other supermarkets’ and there is something in that. But there is a big difference in that the finely balanced ecosystem of English football, that the PL benefits so much from, relies on the smaller clubs as much as it does the ‘bigger’ ones to make the footballing world go round.
And I’ve always argued that it’s about timing. Just because a team is Premier League now, doesn’t mean they always have been or will be. Manchester City were in League One in 1999, and Sheffield United and Wolves much more recently than that. Burnley, on 09 May 1987, beat Orient 2-1 to avoid relegation to the then-Vauxhall Conference. Margins.
When they – occasionally condescendingly – refer to the ‘lower leagues’ and ‘smaller clubs’ they would do well to remember that. Put the virus in another decade and would they like the top twenty clubs to pull up the drawbridge and leave them treading water?
The reason the government want the Premier League to help out financially is because they see the obvious riches such as Chelsea spending £200m and Manchester City buying defenders for £65m. The gap between the haves and the have nots gets wider and wider, and the ability of the other clubs to keep up was hard enough before the coronavirus, and damn nigh impossible now.
But this financial gap, and the ludicrous way that VAR undermines viewing on TV, might have begun to take the gloss off the product in the most serious way since 1992. When the season is already so different without fans, it’s the last thing they need. Broadcasting deals have been astronomical but stalled in the last set of bids as new entrants like Amazon took leftover slots. But the kind of deals struck in the past will be harder to find now. Some overseas contracts have already gone, others will either be cancelled, renegotiated or shrink if the product continues to be perceived as less value-for-money.
If I were a non-league club right now, I’d be doing all I could to make a play for these potentially disenfranchised fans. I’d be showing them an alternative where football is played with fans inside the stadium, where reasonably priced and tasty refreshments are on offer and where fun can still be had with things like singing and shouting. There are still goals as well.
Some PL fans, fed up with the costs and frustrated with the rule changes, VAR and too many penalties, might decide not to go to matches, even when it’s safe to do so. [Note: If those last seven words aren’t included these days, it’s not a real article]. The way that the ‘bigger’ clubs treat the others might also play a factor. For instance, if your EFL club goes bust, how likely are you to throw your cash at a Premier League that didn’t do more to help them?
But unless someone (government, overseas investor or the Premier League) helps out soon, some clubs at the lower end of the league won’t have a pot to piss in.
Eric Dier, for one, might think that’s reason enough to let them go to the wall.
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist