How the Premier League table would have looked without VAR

Premier League fans sat through more than 19 hours of VAR delays over the course of this season. And there were more errors – that’s those confirmed by the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents panel – than ever before.

There is a running joke among West Ham fans that at least they will be spared all this in the Championship. The decision to disallow Callum Wilson’s injury-time equaliser against Arsenal – and the ramifications that had at both ends of the table – was quite possibly the most contentious VAR call in history.

Would it have changed the course of history? That is, as with all VAR decisions, impossible to prove. It’s not even possible to definitively prove which ones were errors, as so many of them remain subjective.

It is possible, however, to calculate how the final table would have looked if the technology had not been used at all.

There are three obvious caveats to that. 1) that can only be done by removing goals that were given following VAR incidents 2) it assumes the score would have stayed as it was without those goals 3) you can’t allow for red cards or other incidents which involved the VAR and changed the game, because it is impossible to show definitively how they influenced the scoreline.

It is also worth saying that the absence of VAR would not mean the end of the endless controversy surrounding refereeing decisions. Arsenal went the entire season without conceding a penalty or receiving a red card. Everton, meanwhile, were the only side not to have a single VAR intervention in their favour.

What would have changed?

• Brighton would have qualified for the Champions League – not the Conference League
• Tottenham would have been comfortably safe – and it would have been Nottingham Forest dragged into a survival battle on the final day. West Ham would still be relegated on goal difference
• Crystal Palace would also have still been in trouble going into the final day
• Sunderland would not have qualified for Europe – and Everton would
• Arsenal would still have won the title, but more narrowly
• Liverpool would have qualified for the Europa League, not the Champions League

How do you fix VAR?

VAR is not going anywhere, not least because Premier League clubs wanted it in the first place. While there have been more mistakes this season, that is still a minority of decisions that are going wrong, with well over 60 per cent resulting in the right call.

There are still ways it could be improved, in particular for matchgoing fans.

• Revert to the “clear and obvious” principle – stop judging in millimeters and either rely solely on semi-automated offside technology, or limit the number of replays allowed to reverse decisions.
• A time limit – officials can watch the footage back for a maximum of a minute. Though that is likely to result in more mistakes, and defeat the object of VAR in the first place.
• Make the whole process audible – rather than just the referee announcing the decision

المصدر: iNews