Dale Johnson picks a weird decision to call out the referees for being wrong on

Excuse my diversion from Arsenal attacker month to talk about something that made me scratch my head as Johnson makes the bizarre claim that Andy Roberston should not have gotten a red card vs Fulham

Please indulge me this bit of over analysis because my fixation issues are making it so I have to get into the weeds after an interaction with Dale Johnson on twitter trying to understand where he came from that lead nowhere.

Every Monday, Dale Johnson writes a column for ESPN that covers the controversial calls from the weekend’s matches and strives to give information about how the decisions were made and how the laws and interpretations fit within each of these unique situations.

It is a good way to learn more about the nuance of the laws of the game and get a view that very often is reflective of the PGMOL thinking (he seems to be able to communicate with them to get additional information that isn’t always readily available to the general public) to understand why something happens and was called the way it was.

I don’t always agree with Johnson or the PGMOL on the calls but it is still a worthwhile bit of information to have for the game.

This week’s column features him going against type and coming out that he thinks the referee and the VAR made the wrong decision. He has done this in the past but the usual feel that you get from reading his column is that he will seek out and stretch things for reasons that justify calls versus saying something was wrong (his discussion of the Dias on Højlund fits this mold more typically).

The call in question this week was Andy Roberston of Liverpool getting a red card for a denial of a goal scoring opportunity [DOGSO] foul in the match against Fulham.

I thought that this on review would be a pretty uncontroversial one where it pretty clearly met the criteria and while their is always a degree of subjective judgement involved that this is a pretty easy one to stick with the call on the field.

That was not the case.

Let’s get into how he talks about this situation. I am going to quote heavily from the column but it is still worthwhile to read it in full.

There was no question about the foul by Robertson, and perhaps it was because of that, coupled with Wilson's position in a central area of the pitch, that made Harrington and the on-field team sure this was a DOGSO offence.

Starting off with agreement. What Robertson does is clearly a foul, he is late to the ball and takes out Wilson with his challenge. I do agree that this is also happening in a pretty central location and in the final third of the pitch. So far so good on this.

The simple view of the incident at the time of the foul suggests a clear goal-scoring opportunity -- and for that reason many will support the red card. Yet there was far more doubt once the whole picture comes into play.

I guess it isn’t as simple as we hoped, lets see what sort of doubt we get here now.

The only box that was definitely ticked in the DOGSO law was the distance between the offence and the goal…

Agreed.

then it's Wilson's touch that determines the quality of the goal-scoring opportunity.

Ok, I am ready to learn more.

Had Wilson cushioned the ball from the miscontrol by Robertson, or touched it forward toward goal, DOGSO would have been certain -- and indeed the ball wouldn't have run to Jiménez.

But Wilson took a heavy touch which pushed the ball out to the left. This meant it wasn't guaranteed that Wilson would have a likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball.

This is the first area where I disagree with Johnson and I think what he describes is different than what the video shows.

He characterizes it as a heavy touch and I think that is debatable but it is a touch that takes the ball a few yards in front of Wilson where he can run on to it and the ball being away from him is what makes the challenge from Robertson a foul because he gets nowhere close and takes him out. If it is a cushioned touch, he can very well lose the momentum taking him towards goal and give Robertson a better opportunity to win back from that spot.

He also describes this as not going towards goal and pushed out to the left. I think that this is not a straight up lie but it is something that is factual but not truthful. The ball moves closer to goal with this touch.

To back this up I took screen shots from when Wilson took his first touch and where the ball was a second later and overlayed them.

This is pushed to left so Johnson isn’t wrong, it is just misleading because it is pushed from the right half space diagonally left and very much into the center of the field and closer to the box from where it started.

This is the evidence that Johnson uses to cast doubt around if the “general direction of the play” criteria has been met. For this the attacker needs to be moving towards goal when the foul happens and I think you would have to stretch the definition quite a bit to have this situation not meet that standard.

Let’s continue on, this is from the same passage but it deals with a different section of the criteria for DOGSO.

This meant it wasn't guaranteed that Wilson would have a likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball, with Van Dijk moving into the area where Wilson would have to run. The movement of the ball not directly toward goal adds further doubt that Wilson would be able to control and shoot before Van Dijk was able to challenge.

I think Johnson is being overly generous with what is possible to happen here with Van Dijk covering back. He is a fast and able defender but this really stretches plausibility to again me thinking he is being misleading.

When Johnson was talking about the red card for a DOGSO that William Saliba got he suggested that for assessing covering defenders imagine that the player that made the foul is removed from the picture.

Here is what the picture looks like with my mediocre removing skills:

This is the moment just after Wilson makes his touch and before he is fouled and the ball is obscured by his body in the top picture but is visible in the side angle. I have added a red arrow that roughly shows the direction that the ball was traveling after he fell down.

With the distance Van Dijk is behind it is a pretty unreasonable expectation that he beats Wilson to the ball that is that close to him and moving still generally away from the defender towards goal.

When you look at this it is hard to make the case that Wilson does not have a high likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball.

To illustrate again on the video screen shots I did a rough mock up of how far people have traveled in the second after the foul and if Wilson covers that same ground without being tackled he is still a good 5-7 yards ahead here. It is certainly not convincing that Van Dijlk covers this off.

There was enough doubt in this situation for a VAR review to downgrade the card to a yellow… A harsh red card for Robertson, as there has to be doubt that Wilson would have a clear goal-scoring opportunity because of his touch. That Robertson's challenge was very clearly a foul and in a central position probably influences opinion on the DOGSO, but the direction of the ball and the presence of Van Dijk made it a tough sell in law.

I don’t buy this assertion at all. Here are the items needed for DOGSO to be called:

• distance between the offence and the goal, the closer to goal the more likely this is to be called

• general direction of the play, the attacker must be moving towards goal at the time of the foul

• likelihood of keeping or gaining control of the ball, the attacker must be close enough to the ball at the time of the foul to continue playing

• location and number of defenders, not more than one defender between the foul and the goal, excluding the player making the foul.

It's an assessment where these four elements must be present. It seems very clear all are met here.

It was agreed already on the distance.

It has been clearly shown the ball is moving closer to the goal attacked.

It seems likely that with the distance that Wilson can still be in control if he is not fouled.

The covering defenders are several yards behind the play.

I think that is a good spot to end the analysis of this play here. The call on the field was DOGSO, the current protocol of VAR is to generally stick with the referee’s call unless there is without a doubt a mistake on the pitch and this doesn’t seem close to meeting that threshold.