English Premier League: No change as clubs vote against VAR introduction

There is nothing in the laws that dictates any sort of time limit for a review.

Which means that, in this case, the referee felt able to recall players back from the dressing room. What about if it was full-time?

“Yes, hello, is that the Manchester City coach driver?”

“Yes, it is, can I ask who’s calling?”

“It’s the referee of the game they’ve just played. Can you turn the bus around and come back, I need to award a penalty. But tell Vincent Kompany he can go home, I’ve sent him off.”

It needs looking at not only from a pragmatic application perspective, but also a legislative one. I know how precious the people in positions of power in football are, they are trying to cover their backs by not writing specifics into the law.

But if we’re going to do VAR, we need to do it properly. Otherwise it will continue to throw up completely different situations which have no precedent or procedure.

Some top-flight managers disagree

Messrs Wenger and Guardiola think that VAR should be introduced next season.

But these are managers of top clubs who are driven by success. It stands to reason that clubs with better players will be more likely to have penalty shouts in their favour. So they have a vested interest to stop the game for 2 minutes to have a look at if they deserved a penalty. Fans, on the other hand, do not.

Last time I wrote, I checked the Laws of the Game, when I criticised several aspects. But the laws seem to be derived from the “VIDEO ASSISTANT REFEREES (VARS) EXPERIMENT” principles, protocols and practicalities. One of which says ‘There is no time pressure during a review – accuracy is more important than speed.’ That’s a founding principle.

Fans want entertainment, not to be stood around waiting for a decision to be made.