A couple of years ago I commented on the fledgling VAR system and it is proving to be the game changer that I believed it would be at the time.
Now, After several weeks use in the Premier League, I am pleased to report that it is working fairly well .
After watching the women’s World Cup I was fearing the worst. At times I felt that it was becoming embarrassing to watch because the principle of changing ‘clear and obvious’ mistakes was not being adhered to. Decisions were being altered far too often, especially in relation to handball in the penalty area, challenges in the penalty area, and the taking of the penalties themselves.
Our Premier League take on this has been, broadly speaking, to ‘raise the bar’ when it comes to changing the decision of the on-field referee, and for this I applaud Mike Riley and his team. ‘Clear and obvious ‘ is what FIFA say and ‘clear and obvious ‘ is what it should mean. If anything, they are going even further in supporting the on-field referee.
I am delighted that they appear to have completely removed the crass, unedifying and frankly embarrassing spectacle of the on-field referee jogging to the dug outs to review his decision on a monitor. Almost by definition, if the refs in the studio need the match referee to make the final decision, then it can’t be clear and obvious to them, and the first decision should stand every time.
One fear I do have is that the match referee may be inclined to bottle a decision on the basis that the boys at Stockley Park will bail him out. Well, it looks to me that they are rarely overturning the match referee’s decision, especially on fouls, and so he needs to continue to be brave, and for all our sakes, be right first time. The penalty given to Liverpool in the recent Liverpool v Leicester match, and the free kick not given to Liverpool in the build up to the Man Utd goal in the Man Utd v Liverpool match, were, in my opinion, both poor decisions by the match referee. Whether you agree with me or not, I do not consider it a failure of VAR that the decisions were not overturned, because they arguably did not meet the ‘clear and obvious’ guideline.
Offside is, like goal-line technology, a matter of fact. So long as the technicians can convince us that they can judge the exact moment the ball is played, then the camera can give the offside decision with complete confidence. Some pundits seem to be wanting ‘daylight ‘, whatever that means, because we are seeing very very tight decisions, more often than not disallowing ‘goals’ rather than overturning the assistant’s flag. Come on guys, its either offside or not. A matter of fact. Period.
The only concern I have with the whole offside thing, is how far back do we go from when the ‘goal’ was scored. Any pass in the ‘same phase of play’ seems to be fair game, and this is leading to disallowed goals when everyone can see that the goal scorer was clearly onside. I was at the Leicester v Tottenham game recently when two goals were chalked off for offside in the build up, and it’s really frustrating for the spectators to see what appears to be a clear goal overturned for something that happened four or five touches ago. How far back will they go? Maybe the apparent instruction to assistants to not flag unless certain, needs to be reconsidered for decisions, say, outside the box, or if it’s clear that the receiver of the pass cannot possibly be the scorer, or… This is obviously a tricky one. I just hope that when referees have their meetings this is being given top consideration. The watching public are looking for accuracy and consistency, but also a vibrant match day experience.