
Top flight club football may end this week but you suspect we will all, unfortunately, still be talking about VAR long into the summer months. Wolverhampton Wanderers have fired the starting pistol on plans for a Premier League vote on whether to scrap technology being used from next season given the frustrating errors and lack of consistency from those officiating matches from Stockley Park.
“It’s time to question whether someone remote disallowing that goal is really what football wants or needs,” Wolves chairman Jeff Shi said in a club statement this week.
When the news of the summer vote broke shortly before Newcastle United‘s clash with Manchester United on Wednesday evening, I was pretty confident I knew my stance on the matter: Removing VAR would be a huge mistake.
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Yes, there are arguments to simply allow referees to manage the game as they see fit, accepting they will, on occasion, make mistakes. However, these mistakes are too frequent for my liking and the standard of officiating in this country is something that irks me, and most supporters, most weeks.
Imagine that first blatantly obvious decision that goes against your team next season because the referee missed it and didn’t have a second opinion? Taking away a vital lifeline for referee’s who may have missed a crucial decision in real time feels like a real step backwards.
Fast forward to half-time in Newcastle’s Old Trafford visit and my mind had changed somewhat. Or at least my stance had certainly softened.
Watching Anthony Gordon be brought down by Sofyan Amrabat in the penalty area and witnessing officials with access to multiple angles and replays get it wrong too. What hope do we have?
It is clear something must change, even if the technology stays. How is it that everyone who has witnessed the Gordon foul agrees it should have been a penalty – except for the handful of specialist referees who are in charge of making these season-defining decisions.
Gordon earned a lot of respect for his brutally honest post-match thoughts on the matter, telling decision-makers to either ‘get rid of it or get better.’ The Newcastle winger is spot on in his assessment.
“I am fond of the idea [of scrapping VAR],” he told Sky Sports. “It should be a thing that works in the league but it’s not. There are constantly too many mistakes.”
This technology works when implemented well. Just look around Europe at the other leagues who have no great issues with it. Granted, it is never going to be perfect but in its current form, in England, it is a total mess.
Matches being decided by major calls harshly going against teams, or officials needlessly stopping games over incidents that no one batted an eyelid at in real time.
I remain largely in favour of VAR staying put but do feel as though unless significant and lasting changes are made to the use of the technology, I could easily be swayed into ditching it. You could even make the argument of keeping goal line technology and potentially using VAR offsides, while doing away with officials hundreds of miles away re-refereeing matches for minute incidents that no one even appealed for in the first place.
You suspect clubs will vote in favour of keeping it beyond the summer – but hopefully Gordon has put the frighteners on those making the calls with his firm home truths following Newcastle’s 3-2 defeat at Old Trafford.
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