Shrimpsvoices

AKA Cheating.

Refs are currently powerless to do anything when goalkeepers are struck down by these dreadful injuries that they've suddenly started to experience. What can be done? The law that says a player who received treatment has to leave the pitch for 30 seconds now penalises the team where a player was genuinely hurt. But, it has cut down on the play acting by outfield players.

But the goalkeeper is immune from the 30 second on the sidelines for reasonable reasons. If the keeper genuinely required treatment, then left the field of play for 30 seconds, the team would be massively disadvantaged.

I'd change two things.

Firstly, an outfield player who requires treatment on the pitch. 30 seconds on the touchline. But, if the player who caused the injury receives a yellow card, they also leave the field of play for the same length of time. That way, the team that committed the foul don't get an advantage. If the action results in a blood injury, but was accidental, so no yellow card, the 'guilty' player still leaves the pitch while the blood injury is sorted out.

For an injured goalkeeper, they must be replaced by the substitute goalkeeper, but they can be swapped back, after one minute, the next time there was a break in play (so potentially, a few minutes). Yesterday's cheat would have needed to leave the pitch three or four times. He'd have come back on, but the disruption to Newport would have stopped the cheating. I'm sure no keeper would feign injury, if they knew they were going to be substituted.

The only exception would be, if the keeper had already been substituted, in which case, keep the same situation as it is now, but that would be very rare. As it is, we've seen multiple cases of cheating this season.

In fairness I think yesterdays keeper had genuinely pulled his groin, but of course if they’d been losing then he would have just got on with it or been subbed.

I did think the rule was if the player goes down after a foul and the ref gives the freekick then they don't have to go off but if they go down off the ball it's 30 seconds on the sideline. Turns out they can only stay on if the foul resulted in a card but if you google it you get results in lots of forums where the ref has just forgotten this. Like you say, this works well for outfield players (when applied) but doesn't apply to goalkeepers. My solution would be if the keeper goes down then nominate another player to go off for 30 seconds in their place, the captain maybe. Doesn't do anything about how it kills momentum and allows the opposition to have an NFL style timeout though.

CityShrimp wrote:In fairness I think yesterdays keeper had genuinely pulled his groin...

N'ah, I don't think so. His kicking was too good. If he had any inclination of a genuine injury, an outfield player would have taken goal-kicks for the rest of the match, just to protect him.

Too many rules seem to be at the officials discretion. As has been said by numerous commentators and posted on here, events have taken place where different refs are taking different action. If the body who make the rules were to make them hard and fast and punish refs for not acting on them, we could get a fairer game.

If a goalkeeper goes down and needs treatment on the pitch twice during a match, the EFL could rule, much like a head injury / possible concussion incident, that they are therefore ineligible to play the next game on medical grounds.

That'd make the goalie think twice about abusing the rules.