When the check was over, Bournemouth head coach Andoni Iraola and his assistant Tommy Elphick burst into hysterical laughter — and who can blame them in the world of the VAR non-decision that is the Premier League?
Antoine Semenyo volleyed home to apparently pull the score back to 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday, giving his team a chance of winning a point with 15 minutes remaining.
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David Raya failed to get a clean connection when punching away a high ball and, on the second rebound, Bournemouth put it in Arsenal’s net. Referee David Coote rightly let the attack reach its natural conclusion but then blew for a foul on Raya by Dominic Solanke.
The Bournemouth players protested, with Philip Billing and Iraola asking the referee and the fourth official to look at a separate pull of Billing’s shirt by William Saliba.
What they forgot is that a VAR monitor review is viewed as sacrosanct, a pilgrimage only for club statement-worthy wrong rather than the plain wrong. Instead, there was a delay of two minutes and 27 seconds while the VAR dissected replay after replay — during which they also checked for a second possible foul — ending with the most predictable outcome of all: stick with the on-field decision.
Solanke did subtly move into the path of Raya but he only nudged him slightly and the Spaniard was able to cleanly navigate around the Bournemouth striker to punch the ball.
But, as there was evidence of contact which aligned with the referee’s initial reading of the incident, it was another decision deemed not to meet the ‘clear and obvious error’ criteria that warrants the ref being summoned to the screen.
The fact it took all that time would suggest the VAR had some doubts, yet Coote was not offered the chance to go to the monitor and check whether he had misinterpreted the impact of the contact with Solanke or any intricacies that can only be seen with the benefit of replays and multiple angles.
Some decisions are so subjective they will still be the subject of debate a week later but there are others, the 70-30, 80-20 calls, that are being allowed to stand because of the rigid pursuit of a ‘high threshold’ before VAR will allow the referee to reconsider.
The game has reached the farcical situation that a ref has to be majorly wrong rather than just a bit wrong, which is why Semenyo’s goal was incorrectly disallowed.
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It was not the only incident over the weekend where the reluctance to send the referee to the monitor was overprotective of the system.
Manchester City took the lead through a generous penalty award. Wolves’ Rayan Ait-Nouri blindly turned into Josko Gvardiol, but his clumsy contact had no impact on the shooting action as the Croatian had already struck a volley that went over the crossbar. It was the sort of natural collision that happens often, due to the momentum of two players competing for a bouncing ball in the penalty area.
Throw in the non-award of a penalty for Brentford forward Yoane Wissa when he looked to have been pulled down by Fulham’s Sasa Lukic, and the apparent push on Ben Brererton Diaz by Nottingham Forest’s Murillo at Bramall Lane in the move where the visitors took a winning 2-1 lead against Sheffield United.
Both decisions led to VAR stoppages but in neither case was the referee called over to see the incident for himself, despite there being credible evidence he had got it wrong.
The worst call of the lot came in Burnley’s 4-1 home loss against Newcastle. At 0-0 and with Burnley on top, Lorenz Assignon was blatantly fouled by Bruno Guimaraes as he burst into the Newcastle box. Referee Anthony Taylor did not give the penalty, and it was somehow deemed not an obvious enough error to refer him to the monitor.
In the second half, Taylor did award Newcastle a penalty when Anthony Gordon was brought down. Lo and behold, the decision was supported.
It was the correct call, but it exemplified how the strictness of review referrals has created a two-tier system which sees similar incidents produce different outcomes.
It has become clear that if a player is tripped unintentionally and the referee sees it in real time and awards the foul, VAR will back him. And if the ref does not give it, then the VAR will also back him. Essentially, there is no definitive right or wrong call on these incidents, only the romanticised notion that by sticking with the original decision, they are avoiding re-refereeing games.
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Very few people want to see more VAR involvement in football but Iraola encapsulated the problem with the current nature of the system perfectly.
“Either we give power to the VAR or we don’t (we) lose the five, six minutes to check everything. I think we have to go one way or the other,” he said after his side’s 3-0 loss to Arsenal.
In the time Coote stood robot-like, surrounded by a lobby of players from both teams while pleading the fifth, as he awaited the VAR decision, he could have simply gone across to the monitor and made the call himself. At present, it is such a rarity that as soon as a ref heads towards that pitchside screen, everyone knows it means an overturn is coming.
City’s second penalty against Wolves on Saturday was only the 95th decision to be overturned in over 350 games this season.
According to stats collated by ESPN journalist Dale Johnson, only twice has a referee gone to the monitor and stuck by his original decision — the second of which came last month, when Michael Oliver sent Andy Madley to the monitor to suggest a Brighton penalty for holding, but Madley reviewed it and judged that Lewis Dunk, the Brighton player concerned, had pulled Wissa first.
The other occasion came in September, when Darren England awarded Aston Villa a penalty after Ollie Watkins went down under a last-ditch sliding tackle. England was called to the screen as it looked like Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards had hooked the ball away, but he believed the defender impeded Watkins before getting that touch.
It was highly subjective and ultimately marked down as an incorrect call by the PGMOL, the match officials’ body, but at least it was transparent to everyone in the stadium that the responsibility lay with England.
Now former VAR Mike Dean has admitted he did not send Taylor to the monitor to look at Tottenham defender Cristian Romero’s hair pull on Marc Cucurella of Chelsea in August 2022 because he did not want to create “any more grief than he already had” for his “mate”. The non-decision saw Spurs escape a red card and then score from the subsequent corner.
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It is hard to escape the sense that rather than an aversion to re-refereeing, the current arbitrary line is actually designed to protect refs from the tough task of marking their own homework.
The Premier League’s Chief Football Officer Tony Scholes said in February that 82 per cent of big calls were accurate pre-VAR compared to 96 per cent this season, a figure produced by the key match incident panel comprised of ex-players and managers.
He acknowledged that the supporter experience is “nowhere near good enough” but said that potential changes are constrained by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which governs the game’s laws.
“We’re doing too many (VAR) checks and we’re taking too long in doing them,” Scholes said.“To a degree it’s understandable given the level of scrutiny these guys are under, from ourselves, also from (the media) as well as from supporters.
“But the reviews are taking too long and it’s affecting the flow of the game. We’re extremely aware of that and the need to improve their speed, while always maintaining the accuracy.”
So, how could the perception of the monitor be changed from a glorified confirmation of an overturn to something that acts as a check and balance for the VAR and the on-field referee to use in conjunction?
Perhaps a VAR-review time limit could be implemented that sees the referee sent over to the monitor. If, say, the VAR has spent 90 seconds looking at every camera angle and slow-motion version of an incident available but remains unsure, they send over the referee to take a look and the two discuss the final call together.
It would give the referee the confidence that he has seen it back clearly himself, compared to the current set-up which sees the VAR explain the images he is seeing into the on-pitch ref’s ear, and must surely cast doubt in the latter’s head.
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There was little trust in VAR when it was introduced to the Premier League for the 2019-20 season with little monitor use at all. It did not ‘sell’ the change of decision to the crowd or players. Now, its lack of use is having a similar effect when VAR is backing up easily disputed on-field calls so often.
VAR is not infallible. It is, just like refereeing, the judgement of humans. Ensuring that the referee retains autonomy should remain high on the agenda but, after five years, there should be a recalibration of what the pitchside monitor is used for.
Otherwise, it undermines the point of having VAR for subjective decisions.
