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2023-24 Premier League Thread

Again tho, if someone believes the viewing experience is much much worse because of it?…..I might actually agree.

MLB for instance, won’t be what it is when they inevitably move to robot umps, imo.


then again, maybe it’s to baseball what “goal line technology” has been to footy, which is largely flawless on the whole.
 
Ed H in Pasadena said:
Don't understand, though, why VAR doesn't generate nearly the controversy in the rest of Europe that it does in England? Why does it seem to work there, and not in England?
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that’s a phenomenal question.

Someone brought this up on a panel or podcast, and I wish I had the exact clip on hand, but I think their argument was that their rules have less grey area for interpretation, and are more cut & dry?
 
Ed H in Pasadena said:
De Zerbi is class. 100%. So happy for all the success he and they've had thus far. Hoping for more for them, too.
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100%

seriously one of the easiest teams to root for, that isn’t my primary team, across all of sport…..same when they had Potter.

just a shinning example of success within the football pyramid being done right….
 
Montana said:
that’s a phenomenal question.

Someone brought this up on a panel or podcast, and I wish I had the exact clip on hand, but I think their argument was that their rules have less grey area for interpretation, and are more cut & dry?
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yeah, so it looks like they go to VAR far far less than the Prem…..but when they do, it overturns the refs call at a much much higher rate, because there’s less grey area & subjectivity and it’s cut and dry.

So while people will argue why no handball penalty was awarded vs VVD in the Brighton game, after a very similar handball was awarded against Romero versus Arsenal….(believe EPL ruling is because ball bounced off VVD chest first, and in Romero’s case it bounced off Maddison first)…..but in Serie A of La Liga both are called handballs instantly with zero subjectivity.

So both those calls are much more likely to be made in the moment (correctly) by the ref, but if they do miss it, VAR corrects them with ease.

….while called or not called in the moment in the Prem, VAR then reviews regardless & likely calls the ref to the screen to make his decision if it hadn’t been awarded. And when that subjectivity is in play, fans are gonna get in an uproar one way or the other, arguing the subtle semantics of it all.

Serie A, La Liga or CL…..no real argument to be made, 90% of the time it clearly is or isn’t a handball.
 
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Villa fans, fill me on in your thoughts on Lange.

Love many of his big signings while with you, but curious about some of the smaller moves for your academy, or youngins signed and sent out on loan…or the nuts & bolts changes he might have made to recruiting, etc.
 
Montana said:
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Villa fans, fill me on in your thoughts on Lange.

Love many of his big signings while with you, but curious about some of the smaller moves for your academy, or youngins signed and sent out on loan…or the nuts & bolts changes he might have made to recruiting, etc.
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Lange gets a lot of love for getting Villa through of the awkward transition from promotion side to mid-table and the solid work he did in the aftermath of the Grealish sale, but the work he did in the academy was VERY expensive and VERY erratic. He's always going to be remembered more for what worked out (Martinez, Watkins, Cash) than what didn't (Barkley, Traore, Sanson), which is fine. The academy had very lofty goals and spent a boatload of cash buying teens in bulk from other academies and really only a couple of those purchases paid off in first team calibre talent (Chukwuemeka, Kellyman, Iroegburnam), while 10-12 others have stagnated. Villa did as well with guys they had as children before Lange showed up (Ramsay brothers, Cam Archer) as they did with his grand schemes, honestly, and there was a lot of staff turnover at the training ground under his watch. So when he got shunted off to youth development it was seen in Birmingham as a place for him to lay low while he looked for another job.

Looks like Tottenham is that landing spot. Good luck. I suspect he's got a better resume than he's gotten results. I'm surprised he didn't end up back at a mid-tier Euro league.
 
Yeah those youth signings are rough to hear about, cause I think being in charge of our academy is going to be one of his primary responsibilities, given the Scott Munn hiring & that Paratici is being kept on in a “consultant” role….which feels like us just circumventing his ban for the most part.
 
I don't know how other countries have run VAR, but I think the biggest issue with English VAR is that its being run by other refs. One big issue with that is they're all friends and we've heard them admit not correcting a mistake because they didn't want the ref to have to deal with it or whatever that excuse was. Also, its not the same skillset. There is no need for VAR officials to know every rule, the only calls they actually overturn are offsides. Anything else, if they think there was a mistake or something was missed, they have the ref go look at it. There's no reason that the entire VAR team can't be people who just do that and nothing else. The second biggest issue with var and the one that always drives me insane is when they try to use it to a degree it's not capable of being accurate. Any time the last defender and the attacker are at basically the same spot, they'll still try to draw two lines on top of each other and act like its accurate. Absolutely maddening and not just because it always seems to go against Villa when it happens and never against our opponents.

As for refereeing getting worse in all sports, I truly don't think that's true and the issue is more that we see everything and when there is a mistake, especially a high profile one, we see it over and over again and everyone talks about it. I would argue that refereeing is better and more consistent probably than it was in the past. Baseball is the easiest example, because basically nothing in the sport is subjective. Umps are so much better than they were 20 years ago and every time an ump retires and they get to replace them, they get even better. Have you seen the strike zones that were called in the 90s?
 
Montana said:
Yeah those youth signings are rough to hear about, cause I think being in charge of our academy is going to be one of his primary responsibilities, given the Scott Munn hiring & that Paratici is being kept on in a “consultant” role….which feels like us just circumventing his ban for the most part.
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Yeah, Lange had a big rep for finding and developing youth gems when he came in from Copenhagen but at Villa it was mostly "buy as many promising teenagers as possible and pray that enough of them pop to make it all pay for itself." It DID pay for itself ... barely and mostly because Chelsea paid way too much for Chuky ... but didn't really accomplish much otherwise.
 
Yeah, it’s honestly such a crapshoot sometimes I’m not even that opposed to that shotgun approach…so long as he talks Levy into continuing to invest big in academy kids, that’s a win…..and it sounds like he does like finding out what the coaches preferred profiles are, then utilizing the data to find targets….and our scouting departments have been on a bit of a heater lately, so 🤞🏼
 
Montana said:
Yeah, it’s honestly such a crapshoot sometimes I’m not even that opposed to that shotgun approach…so long as he talks Levy into continuing to invest big in academy kids, that’s a win…..and it sounds like he does like finding out what the coaches preferred profiles are, then utilizing the data to find targets….and our scouting departments have been on a bit of a heater lately, so 🤞🏼
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Look ... you hit big on the right kid and none of the rest matters. Youth development is always a volume vs. return game. Barca didn't just pluck Messi out of a pile and call it a day, they had a 100 misses to go with that huge win.
 
jeffbear said:
Look ... you hit big on the right kid and none of the rest matters. Youth development is always a volume vs. return game. Barca didn't just pluck Messi out of a pile and call it a day, they had a 100 misses to go with that huge win.
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totally, and to his credit I think that’s what Belichick always got right in NFL drafting. Be humble enough to know you can’t beat the market consistently, and draft volume above all else.
 
VinatieriDefinesClutch said:
It's always my strategy on PES career modes. Sell all my old players, try to sign every promising youth player and be mediocre for a few years before becoming a dynasty. Todd Boehly, clearly uses the same strategy when he plays.
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Boehly has an even better (but so fucking antithetical to the spirit of the game imo) strategy which is to buy the best players he can from elsewhere, give them long ass deals to dampen the per year FFP hit, and then sell any/all academy players that you can to maximize your FFP “profits”.

They need to fix the rules so that it doesn’t benefit teams to “steal” other teams academy stars once they hit their prime, while selling their own for the FFP benefits….fans should be invested in their academy guys coming through the system to become starting XI fixtures, and FFP should make it extra beneficial that you keep them, not sell them.


I hate him for it, but Boehly is kinda dunking on the rest of the Prem a bit by getting the most out of the current set up, as he can. (Now if he’s bought the right players or not, can be debated)
 
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Well, I'd rather see Boehly game the system that way than watch yet another super wealthy bad actor just ignore the rules and let the most expensive lawyers in the world walk all over the FA or UEFA when they try to enforce them. It's not a perfect comparison because Boehly also has ties to Saudi backing, but still ... I'll take rule bending I can understand over the indefensible kind.
 
jeffbear said:
Well, I'd rather see Boehly game the system that way than watch yet another super wealthy bad actor just ignore the rules and let the most expensive lawyers in the world walk all over the FA or UEFA when they try to enforce them. It's not a perfect comparison because Boehly also has ties to Saudi backing, but still ... I'll take rule bending I can understand over the indefensible kind.
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1000%

I do despise both….but one is absolutely worse than the other.

The EPL system is so goddamn brilliant in spirit & in theory….and yes legacy clubs like Liverpool, United, etc will have their advantages because of the revenues they can bring in….but I’ll take a thousand Liverpools doing it the right way, over one (Roman) Chelsea or Man City buying up everyone else’s talisman and warping the balance of the entire league. They’ve both been such a stain on the sport imo.


I’d also add….Klopp’s 19-20 title & the team he built, is vastly more impressive to me than Pep’s 5 titles, personally.
 
For years, Chelsea used Arnhem Vitesse in the Netherlands as a de facto farm club, they had upwards of 5 players there on loan in the bad old days.
 
The 2 VAR officials that bollocksed up the Liverpool goal are returning to duty this weekend. Darren England will be the 4th official for Brentford v. Burnley and Dan Cook will be on the lines for Sheffield v. Man U.
 
andyt said:
The 2 VAR officials that bollocksed up the Liverpool goal are returning to duty this weekend. Darren England will be the 4th official for Brentford v. Burnley and Dan Cook will be on the lines for Sheffield v. Man U.
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Not surprising. PGMOL gonna PGMOL.
 
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