Things From The Premier League: Throw A Tack On The Road Stop The Meat Wall

With one stoppage and review, the title race and relegation battle come into much clearer relief.

I try not to combine the two areas I cover the most, hockey and soccer. But sometimes, rivers form a confluence. Most of the hockey podcasts/coverage I consume at one point or another has expressed utter horror at the thought that a Stanley Cup Final game, or any Game 7, could come down to a video review of some kind. Especially if it were an offside review, given the small margins those are decided on. It is spoken about as if society would crumble around it should the scenario ever become reality. Then again, society is crumbling, so maybe offsides review are to blame?

I haven't really understood this view. While the optics of it would certainly be different than what we've known before, that's the ultimate test of the technology and method If it can stand up to that, then we'll know it's worth keeping. And if it can't pass that test, then it's not worth having. It can't be in reserve for just "the middle" of decisions and stakes. Just because it has the potential of calling things down to a margin that the human eye couldn't get to before, that's just the ability to get the rules more right than we could before.

Obviously, this gets more muddied when it comes to judgement calls, but VAR got to this highest level of test before hockey's did, when it very well might have decided the title and the last relegation spot in the Premier League. How could more ride on a review than that?

Whether you or I like it or not, VAR did pass that test. We can decide for ourselves how much we feel whatever has gone on in the season previously, and how this call went and how that call went, influences what we think about this particular decision on David Raya that handed Arsenal back the initiative and dangled West Ham over the boiling lava. But it is the right call. Raya's arm is held by Pablo. You can see him grabbing it. It's not simply an arm bar. There may be some wiggle room for interpretation, but what's the argument that it's not a foul? If it's that other refs have missed the same type of foul earlier in the season, that's pretty flimsy.

If you're a hockey fan, you've watched teams employ an ethos that if we just commit enough penalties enough times all over the ice, the refs can't possibly call them all. Mike Babcock's Wings were famous for this, interfering with non-puck-carriers multiple times a shift, but no ref had the stones to put them on the kill 15 times a game.

If Arsenal's calculation when they turned into Set Piece FC was that no referee would consistently whistle away all their corners and freekicks if they just turned everything into a moshpit, then they're just ahead of the game (though "moshpit" isn't really the best metaphor, because as 90s kids know, proper moshpit etiquette did require helping people up who had been knocked down). Yes, there are about three different fouls on that fateful West Ham corner, but no ref or VAR is going to call them all. Which is a separate discussion from this particular foul.

What rules changes there should be or the aesthetics being bad, these are all separate discussions. This is the game we have now, and it has VAR, and it has slamdancing in the six-yard box. And VAR passed the test. The rules were applied correctly on a call the ref on the field would have had a hard, if not impossible time, seeing live. That was the idea, after all. Boil VAR down to its essence and purpose, and that's it.

Anyway, the rest of the slate as it went.

Liverpool 1 -1 Chelsea

Described this one in the preview as two teams that need the season to be over, and apparently that's also true of the Anfield faithful, who made it very clear they're very tired of watching this shit. After scoring five minutes in, against a team that is looking for any reason to quit, Liverpool could have wrapped this one up well before halftime with even just a sprinkling of initiative. Instead, they shrank, backed up, turned off, and let Chelsea locate their balls. When Arne Slot spends the postgame presser saying he's not telling his players to back off or to not press, but that's what they end up doing, wouldn't it suggest his players aren't listening to him? Don't tie your own noose, bud.

Brighton 3 - 0 Wolves

Now this is how you end a match when you score early against a team that doesn't want to be there. Brighton scored in the opening minute, then scored again in the 5th minute, and it was over, and both teams can have a nice day in the sun (though days in the sun don't really go well for the English, as they'll find out in Texas this summer. The term "lobsterback" will make a return).

Fulham 0 - 1 Bournemouth

I've never coached a soccer team, but I would think a tenet of playing a team that has had a player sent off would be to not do anything galactically stupid to give the ref a chance to even things up, which they might be looking to do. Enter Joachim Andersen, doing a West Side Story slide to even things up against Bournemouth and give them a platform to win yet again. Once Harry Wilson stopped scoring from Narnia, and Raul Jimenez got old and hurt, Fulham can't seem to find twine. Marco Rose is going to walk into the manager's office at Bournemouth, quite possibly with a Champions League spot given to him, and have utterly no chance to live up to what came before him.

Sunderland 0 - 0 Man United

What do you get in May with two teams with nothing left to accomplish on the season? You get two Wolves. No, not in the "duality of man" sense.

Man City 3 - 0 Brentford

This makes it look easier than it was. This was a familiar City script of late. They huff and puff in the first half, maybe first hour, and finally produce a goal that feels like passing as stone. Then they spend the 15-20 minutes after trying to puke it up, but only with varying success. Brentford couldn't take the invitation, and City got two goals late with the open space on the counter. For all of Pep's geniusness and lore, City's plan these days looks the same as some college basketball upstart in the tournament with a guard that can't miss. the Davidson/Steph plan. Just feed Doku the ball and get out of the way. But sometimes genius is not overthinking it.

Burnley 2 -2 Aston Villa

If you weren't clear that Unai Emery has put every claret and blue egg in the Europa League basket, this would be the definitive answer. It's good that Emery has that smoke bomb to get everyone to avert their eyes, because it's the same late season collapse Villa had last season that cost them a Champions League place, or the one before that when they went winless in their last four that nearly cost them a Champions League place then. Maybe he should use more than 8.5 players during the season?

Crystal Palace 2 - 2 Everton

Everton have now coughed up leads late to a Liverpool side that has dyed its hair purple and only writes poetry now, West Ham who are going to get relegated (probably), Man City (which, fine), and now Palace who are entirely focused on the Conference League. Those six points would have them in the race for fifth, not just the race for sixth, which might still be Champions League runoff.

Forest 1 - 1 Newcastle

It's probably worth asking if Newcastle really needed Sandro Tonali if they could have figured out that Elliot Anderson would turn into this, capped off by scoring a late equalizer and then immediately cramping up from the effort of that and basically playing Newcastle by himself for 85 minutes. Newcastle can bitch and moan about PSR all they like, but self-scouting might have helped them duck that better than they did.