2025-26 UEFA Champions League - See Mod Note Post 1

Why would that make you dislike the team?

Who's online fans are not insufferable?

Even though we support different teams, you are hitting the nail on the head. Arsenal fans won't like it but I've never seen a season where Prem rivals are all so universally in agreement how insufferable they are . Last season and this season have being ridiculous so you are spot on

wtf is this garbage?

Every single Arsenal fan I know has been crapping it for the last 4 months and I think the Arsenal chat bears this out

The point is no United fan would want their local rivals parading the cup through Manchester.

That’s simply not true. I think the majority of overturns are obvious. Liverpool had a penalty awarded incorrectly against palace at the weekend which everyone could see was wrongly called and it was quickly overturned, for example.

There are always going to be decisions that people disagree with though. Ones that one person see as a foul and another sees as not much in it. And that’s going to be true for referees. Expecting VAR to remove all refereeing controversy is unrealistic because ultimately it’s still humans making the call. It does get a lot more big decisions right though.

Nonsense.

If definitely was a penalty.

And if it was 'clear and obvious' the ref would have looked at it once and overturned it. Instead he watched it back what 10 times then decided.

He knew it was a penalty he just bottled the call.

Yep.

The new golden rule is VAR is always correct, even when it's blatantly wrong.

Never a penalty.

This is the sort of comment that could come back to haunt you. Atletico’s players wouldn’t be behind the door trying to con a penalty out of the ref like Eze did. Good to see VAR used properly in that instance and the con didn’t work.

I think this is another example of how hard it is to ref the game.

When it was just refs making calls, we all had different opinions come the highlights and replays.

Now VAR has arrived and we still argue over what is what. Just shows it's all down to opinion. Even when we have every split second of the action in super slow motion.

Eze got caught out. It’s the old I’ve seen them given. However and I’m not blaming Eze in particular he’s just doing what has become the done thing over the years which is when there’s contact you go over.

Eze feels the contact, moves his foot away and then throws himself to the floor. The contact was minimal and not enough on its own to knock him over.

Now consistency is important but if they are now using VAR to change that culture of always throwing yourself to the floor if there’s any contact at all, then that’s a good thing.

Your EPL refs on a marginal call like this are going to be on the side of the English team for Sky Sports. Irrelevant.

There was contact but that wasn’t what caused him to fall over. He moved away his foot and then dived. He dived. No penalty. Good call.

Hopefully a sign of VAR being used to eradicate that diving culture out of the game.

Refs play the media game same as anyone else. I didn’t put it the way you did, I said on balance on a marginal call that could be argued either way they’ll be as politically expedient as anyone.

I think what you might be seeing is the beginning of an effort to eradicate or to at least minimise that culture that lead to players in recent decades going over in the box when an opponent merely touches them. I think it’s a good thing and if it was an Atletico decision overturned in similar circumstances they’d be no complaining and your 3 EPL refs would be politically expedient on the other side of the argument. 👍

don’t think it matters if it was a peno or not at this stage. I think Arsenal will win the home game. They were the better team last night also. Can’t see them beating PSG or Bayern though in a final.

Yeah VAR is only supposed to intervene over a clear and obvious error. Which if you have to look at something 10 times before making a decision, well means its not clear and obvious.

As Ally Mccoist said on commentary, if that happened the other end of the pitch, the decision would have stood. Simeone influential there and tbh fairplay to him, as it worked.

I defo think Arsenal are too short.

4/6 seems about right to me

Whatever one thinks of Arsenal stylistically, I think you'd struggle to find any but the most biased of people who didn't agree that the team has improved from a results perspective under Arteta. I think you'd find far fewer who'd say the same about Slot just because he won a league with Klopp's leftover team.