Premier League's first New Year resolution should see VAR left behind in 2023

31 December 2023 , 11:06

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Premier League's first New Year resolution should see VAR left behind in 2023

Forget ringing out the old for New Year - let’s get rid of VAR instead.

Seeing as it’s the time for setting fresh goals and making wishes, wouldn’t it be great to give football back to the people it should belong to? Like players and fans.

Match officials want to keep it, apparently. Guess what? The vast majority of people who invest their lives and hard-earned money in the game would bin it in the blink of an eye.

And with all due respect to the men and women dressed in black, the wishes of those stakeholders should come first. We have heard a lot recently about how football has a problem with the lack of respect being shown to officials.

I really think VAR is adding to the problem. It is so frustrating that instead of admiring brilliant goals and assists, so much time is taken up listening to former referees making excuses for bad decisions. It is sucking all the joy and passion out of the game.

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I keep hearing that the technology is now in place so VAR is here to stay. Why, when it isn’t working? Let’s be honest, the most contentious decisions are still being made on a subjective basis.

What is one referee’s penalty is another referee’s fair tackle. Football has always been a game of opinions - and all the slow-motion replays in the world aren’t going to change that.

VAR has courted controversy since its introduction to the Premier League (Getty Images)

Should VAR be kept in the Premier League? Share your thoughts in the comments below

I have no issue with using VAR to decide on the black and white decisions like offside - although I would like to see the law changed so that a player is deemed offside only when there is daylight between the attacker and the last defender. But as a striker I would say that!

Goalline technology has been a huge success, despite the odd gremlin in the system. The rest of VAR should be ditched for the good of the game.

Football is supposed to be an entertainment business. One of the reasons it became the people’s game was because it gave players and fans a place to express themselves.

VAR has had a number of controversial moments this season (Getty Images)

Whether that was on the pitch or in the stands, letting your emotions out at the end of the week became a big part of fans' lives. Many supporters no longer celebrate until it becomes clear that a VAR official sitting miles away from the action isn’t going to intervene - and that can be four or five minutes after the event.

That isn’t what football should be about. I really believe that players and fans would be more willing to accept refereeing mistakes made in an instant if the alternative is VAR.

The vast majority of the people I speak to yearn for a return to the good old days of honest-to-goodness human error. Will VAR be ditched? Probably not because too many people have invested so much in trying to give us the perfect game and won't want to admit they were wrong.

But football is meant to be flawed. Mistakes are part of the drama of the game. VAR has only served to put refereeing errors at the forefront. The fact that video officials were unable to intervene to prevent Willy Boly’s red card last weekend illustrates the madness of it all.

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Boly clearly won the ball with a textbook tackle - but referee Rob Jones didn’t think so and opted to show the Nottingham Forest defender a second yellow card. VAR regulations meant Jones could not go to the monitor to take a second look. If he had, he would have realised that the contact was initiated by Bournemouth’s Adam Smith rather than the Ivory Coast international.

So Forest were forced to play for 70 minutes with 10 men and ended up losing 3-2 when Dominic Solanke completed his hat-trick in injury-time. And guess what? Manager Steve Cooper got the sack. Talk about Merry Christmas! Football is looking at introducing sin bins. The administrators should start 2024 by putting VAR in there.

Robbie Fowler