Masses of criticism from neutrals and West Ham fans alike followed the crashingly obvious cock-up in allowing Chelsea’s goal to stand on Monday night, with the clear and obvious foul on Jarrod Bowen being ignored by the on-field referee and the subsequent VAR check.
New changes to the technology which will make the offside process semi-automatic wouldn’t have had any impact on ‘that’ goal: But the Premier League still has plans to roll out the (in their words, not mine) ‘new improved’ VAR at selected stadiums across London before the end of the season.
According to londonworld.com, :“Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham, Chelsea and Premier League rivals will soon play top flight fixtures with the use of semi-automated VAR offside technology after ‘significant progress’ towards the implementation of the system was confirmed this week.”
I’ll try not to be too negative about the system, I promise. Apparently the new enhancements are almost ready and ” could reduce the time taken for an offside check by 31 seconds on average: “
The new system is similar to that trailed during the World Cup with no need for the VAR to add the red and green lines by hand:
“FIFA and UEFA used an enhanced system in the World Cup and Champions League, which saw a chip placed inside the ball for better detection of whether it had been touched. However, Adidas owns the patent for that system and does not provide the ball to major European leagues.”
So just quicker decisions look like they’re on the way, then, not better ones.
I for one don’t watch football any more, the game has been ruined by the many different interpretations of match day officials.
In the early days of VAR in the build up to a goal Declan Rice had the ball kicked into his hand goal disallowed! Recently Jarrod Bowen is clearly fouled goal stands!
There have been many talking points every match since VAR has been introduced and barely 5% in a positive way. VAR has ruined the game and the whole game day/match experience and the FA see that’s acceptable to charge you for the ‘experience!’ I’ll stick to watching highlights.
There’s nothing wrong with the basic idea of VAR it’s the way it’s used that causes all the problems. The actual interest is in establishing exactly what happened and correcting what was got wrong.
Not it applies to this but not to that, nothing to do with whether the referees error was reasonable or not, just exactly what happened.
Maybe they should use it to spot obvious fouls in the build up.