VAR regains its status as the Premier League’s biggest talking point
There was a sense that amid the recent furore surrounding the application of the handball law this season in the Premier League, football supporters had refocused their attentions away from the contentious talking point that is VAR.
Cue the Merseyside Derby, and a match which ended up bringing the ghosts of the VAR debate back into the limelight like never before. Frankly, the match represented a hot mess for VAR David Coote and the match referee Michael Oliver. The first flashpoint was a challenge by Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford on Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk, which left the Dutchman with a damaged anterior cruciate ligament. The incident warranted no further action in the eyes of the officials, due to the fact that Van Dijk was deemed offside in the build-up, despite Pickford doing his best impression of the karate kid.
And there was further pain for Liverpool, as a last-gasp winner from captain Jordan Henderson was ruled out after Sadio Mané was adjudged to be offside, despite replays seeming to suggest he was onside to the naked eye. It was a kick in the teeth for the Reds, and left manager Jürgen Klopp’s blood boiling.
Moreover, the match kick-started another wave of complaints towards the application of VAR technology and its effect on the Premier League. This season has seen a major increase in the number of penalties awarded, due to a combination of clamping down on handballs and the use of VAR, but Liverpool’s offside complaints paint a familiar picture, with numerous counts of questionable offside decisions across the league since the introduction of VAR.
This one was particularly baffling, the kind of replay that, pre-VAR, would not have raised a single question, Mané would simply have been considered onside. The various lines drawn up to help determine whether a player has strayed into an offside position are increasingly infuriating for fans of football, as goals are being disallowed that simply wouldn’t have been before, despite no clear error from the officials taking place.
The Pickford tackle on Van Dijk, meanwhile, was all the more baffling. There is a grey area in the rules for offences that occur after another offence has already occurred, but it’s clear that Pickford’s challenge endangered the safety of his opponent. The FA have decided not to retrospectively punish Pickford due to the fact that the officials saw the incident, but that does not negate the fact that, despite video technology, they did not implement the rules in the correct way.
All of this is now in the past, and Liverpool are left to lick their wounds as they pick themselves up for the remainder of their title defence. The absence of Van Dijk for the rest of the season will have a major impact on the squad, and on Liverpool’s chances in the Premier League betting on Betfair Exchange. It’s up to Klopp to motivate the team to put their feelings of grievance behind them and focus their efforts on regaining their best form.
But this is a problem that goes beyond Liverpool. Each week we are seeing the influence of VAR have a negative impact on the way fans enjoy football. The only hope is that with time we see a smoothing out of the procedures which are causing so much strife in football at the moment.
