A lot is said about VAR. A lot of nonsense is spoken about what the situation is now, with the technology in use.
I say that because if you are to have any sensible rational conversation about it, you have to include the negatives AND the positives that we have seen.
My belief is that whilst there are clearly improvements needed in how the Premier League (and domestic cup competitions AND the UEFA competitions) have decided to implement VAR, overall it has shown that using the technology is absolutely essential.
It all feels a bit like old timers talking about the mythical good old days in general life, you know, those great days of no inside toilet, poor child mortality stats, poverty rife and life expectancy so low.
Yes, just like life in general in the past, there were also a lot of good things about football in the past.
However… it had got to a ridiculous stage, whereby we would sit at home and seeing clear as day, match after match decided by outrageous cheating, goals given and not given when the complete opposite was so obvious, so many things where so difficult / impossible for the referee and those running the line to see in the blink of an eye, an eye that was so often obstructed and/or not up with play.
At a conservative estimate, I would suggest that there are probably around twenty times less serious errors made these days, since VAR was brought in. As for the cheats, they hardly ever bother now, you won’t be rewarded for diving these days, quite the opposite.
Which brings me to Aston Villa v Newcastle United…
At Villa Park on Saturday, the absence of VAR when combined with the performance of the match officials, brought this very debate into the homes of a national TV audience.
If anybody now thinks we would be better off without VAR, then you need to give your head a wobble.
Referee Chris Kavanagh and his helpers were worse than useless. Goals wrongly allowed to stand, penalties wrongly not given, red cards wrongly not given and pretty much ALL of these decisions going against Newcastle United.
The truth is, this used to be the norm.
Before VAR came in, these kind of wrong decisions happened in nearly every match but there was never a big deal made of it when the decisions were highlighted on TV, because there wasn’t an available way for these wrong decisions to be corrected during a match. Now there is a way for wrong decisions to be corrected and that is VAR, when used…
The sheer number of shocking wrong major decisions would have been seen as a more extreme match in the past BUT not out of the ordinary. A good match before VAR might have say up to two terrible decisions, an average one maybe three or four, whilst a really bad one would have five or six or more, as was the case at Villa Park.
The times when the technology gets things wrong during matches is once in a very long time.
What are seen as ‘VAR errors’ these days are in fact almost always simply human error, the VAR and/or the referee making a subjective decision on what they have seen, what they think is the right decision. This human error component is then compounded by trying to, quite literally at times, trying to split hairs (Willock goal disallowed for ‘offside’ at Spurs). A right mess these days made of offsides when trying to look in minute detail at something that isn’t fair to do (read GToon’s Usain Bolt article that followed the Spurs match for an explanation).
Chris Kavanagh and his helpers were certainly guilty of failing to give Newcastle United the clearest of penalties, you didn’t need VAR to see that Digne was standing a couple of yards in the box before handling it, was a couple of yards inside the box when jumping and the ball hitting his arm, AND was still a couple of yards inside the box when landing and not moving, as he awaited what must surely follow. Instead, Kavanagh walked over and didn’t even look at the Villa player as he marked the pitch some five yards from where the handball had taken place, for only a free-kick. You can say the match officials were also guilty of failing twice to send Digne off, the shocking red card Murphy challenge he only got a yellow for, then the (second) yellow he should have got for the (non-)penalty. There was also a number of next level decisions just below shocking, that weren’t given, such as the foul on Hall that should have seen a penalty awarded.
Which brings me to offsides
Much as I think Kavanagh is a rubbish referee (which I have long thought, not just yesterday), talk of corruption is infantile and embarrassing. If VAR had been in use and he had been directed to look at the screen, he would have then sent Digne off on both occasions, he would have given the handball penalty, he would almost certainly have given the Hall penalty. The same if he had been acting as the VAR, Kavanagh would have similarly directed the on the pitch referee to do these things as well.
Offside is very different.
Fans and pundits these days, including/especially last night keen to say stuff along the lines of…”If you look across the line, he was clearly offside.”
Alan Shearer and many others were saying this about the Tammy Abraham offside goal yesterday.
It is ‘clearly offside’ if you are looking at a TV replay freezeframe that shows both the moment the ball was kicked AND where the players are all standin.
This is NOT what the assistant referee has the benefit of, yet this is what the pundits and fans and journalists all make out is the case.
If you doubt me…
Back in my days of Sunday morning football, what would often happen is that they would often ask one or more of the subs to run the line, if no other mugs willing to do it.
I did it once, never again.
I challenge you to go down to your nearest football pitch today, or any day, and have a go at running up and down the line, judging when it should be offside or not.
It is impossible.
When say there is a free-kick like the one Tammy Abraham scored from, with up to maybe 16 or more players along the line, it is impossible for the naked eye to exactly see the free-kick get taken AND watch all 16+ players, when asked to judge such small measurements. Basically, you will get some right and some wrong, you have to guess most of the time. If you were watching that Sunday morning match on a screen and able to use replays, you would get it right nearly every time. It is crazy to claim it was obvious when talking about a foot or so and depending on the naked eye and one millisecond look, when in reality you are judging that bloke/woman running the line from a perspective of yourself able to use TV replays.
Another nonsense with offsides, is denying this reality.
If not able to use TV replays, what would you say is the margin for error when a ball is booted from deep in one half, to deep into the other half?
Imagine you are running the line for the half where the ball is heading to, you have to be looking all the way down the opposite end of the pitch to see exactly when the ball is kicked. You are then looking at where the ball is going to go before turning and start to run, then looking at where the players are in your half of the pitch. In that space of time, if they are both sprinting, both the last defender and the attacking player could have ran at least five yards each (including in opposite directions). So by the time you turn to look with the naked eye, for all you know, the attacking player could have been onside, or up to ten yards offside!
Fourth round good, Fifth round bad
Summing up the absolute fact that VAR negatives are almost all due to the human part, the subjective decision making.
What about the decision that Aston Villa v Newcastle United was not allowed to use VAR in the fourth round of the FA Cup, BUT would though have been in use, if this had been an FA Cup fifth round match.
How does that decision make any sense whatsoever?
It is seemingly due to an idea that it would be unfair of a team getting a positive or negative impact from the use of VAR, whilst at other stadiums with no VAR set-up, they wouldn’t get the same positive or negative impact via VAR.
This is just stupid beyond belief, the only way it would make sense, is that they wait until the FA Cup semi-finals before using VAR, as all of the last three matches in the competition are always played at Wembley.
So basically, Aston Villa could have fluked their way through yesterday because no VAR to correct the errors that so badly affected Newcastle United. Then Villa in the fifth round could have had the same decisions go against them BUT with VAR then correcting those bad decisions on the pitch.
Gong back to the whole VAR debate, on whether or not it should be used in football generally. For me, you might as well be campaigning for a return to outside toilets, if you think going back to not using VAR technology is the way to go.