Premier League: VAR errors at least hit everyone

During the week, the Key Match Incidents (KMI) panel announced that there have been 13 VAR mistakes in the Premier League so far this year. And with that, every fan of a Premier League club replied incredulously, ’13 VAR mistakes all season!? There were 13 VAR mistakes in the last match I watched alone!” But the KMI panel begs to differ.

For those wondering what a KMI panel is? I know I did. It is an independent panel made up of five members; of three former players, plus one representative each from the Premier League and the referees' body, the PGMOL. They meet weekly to review and assess controversial events and decisions from games, before ruling whether the right decision was made by the match officials.—

Anyway, the league states that there have been 70 VAR interventions in the 239 league games this season —  around one every three matches. With the league pointing out that the accuracy of 'Key Match Incidents' is at 96.4% — up from 95.7% at the corresponding point last term.

Errors

Only four of the 13 errors were divulged by the panel, which were:

1. Bournemouth's Dango Outtara’s late winner against Newcastle ruled out erroneously as a handball by VAR.

2. Man United defender Matthijs de Ligt’s tackle on Danny Ings of West Ham, which was judged by VAR worthy of giving the Hammers a late penalty, which they converted for the win. Afterwards the ref admitted that the penalty should not have been awarded.

3. Brentford's Christian Norgaard was deemed, on the referee viewing a VAR replay, to have caught Everton’s Jordan Pickford with a knee-high challenge. Norgaard was shown a straight red for it, but later had the red card and automatic three-match ban retracted.

4. Nikola Milenkovic scored a header to put Nottingham Forest 4-1 up against Southampton. But was deemed by VAR, inaccurately, to be offside. Forest still won 3-2 but the call made it a lot tighter affair.

Some of these may not be so memorable to people and most had little effect on the sides’ involved current table position. But a serious fallout from one of these divulged errors, was that the decision going against de Ligt in the Man United v West Ham game which ended up being Erik ten Hag’s last match in charge of the Old Trafford outfit. Now it can be argued that Ten Hag was circling the drain hole of his United career anyway, but it can’t be denied that the West Ham defeat was enough for the club to pull the plug. And so we see that errors on VAR do have serious ramifications.

We will have to wait on the details on the other nine VAR mistakes, but fans will, no doubt, have their own list of pertinent injustices perpetrated by VAR on their clubs. There is also a notable belief, especially among Arsenal fans, that they have been hit hard by VAR errors damaging their title challenge. Analysis of the decisions that have gone their way versus decision that went against them does find that Arsenal are indeed one of the more put upon clubs for VAR decisions going against them, with a net three decisions going against them, with only Chelsea able to feel more aggrieved, with an overall five VAR decisions going against them.

In comparison, Man City, Brighton, and Leicester top the in-favour VAR decisions list, with five VAR calls each going their way. Meanwhile, Arsenal’s main competitor for the title, Liverpool, ended up with one more VAR decision going in their favour than against them.

If the table was adjusted to take in those VAR decisions, then Liverpool would still be top but with just a one-point advantage rather than their current six points lead at the moment.

What's missed

But life is never so clear cut, while it is important to take into account the errors of VAR, one only has to look at recent matches to see that there are as many mistakes where VAR was not even used to adjudge what looked like blatant indiscretions.

A couple of weeks ago, much was made of the straight red card Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly got for tripping Wolves’ Matt Doherty. His red and automatic three-match ban was later removed by the league as it was an obvious error, and Arsenal were rightly aggrieved. However, on the same day Liverpool had a blatant kung fu kick by an Ipswich player on the chest of Wataru Endo totally ignored by the ref and not even picked up by VAR. The Ipswich player survived a booking, it is believed as he just came on the pitch as a sub, but it was a crazy over-the-top tackle deserving of some punishment.

In the end, neither event affected the outcome for the Gunners or the Reds. But that same Ipswich player, later provided the assist for Ipswich’s consolation goal. Something that may be a concern should goal difference come into the equation of who is champion come May.

A lot is made of the VAR errors ruining the game, and the league in Norway is abandoning the use of VAR after this season. But then again, it does get more right than wrong and if the Premier League introduces the long-delayed semi-automated offside technology then it should only get better and remove some of the annoying delays too. Maybe having the PGMOL running VAR needs to be changed too, an independent group not so personally linked to the video officials and the referee on the pitch would remove some of the conspiracy theories on referees having an agenda against a particular club.

Ironically, the stats show that just like pre-VAR days, some of the decisions go against you and some of the decisions go for you. They do tend to equal out over time.