Disband the PGMOL; the new version of VAR is even worse than the last

The tedious farce of VAR continues to soil an ever-dysfunctional and uninteresting product: The Premier League. Apparently, they’ve worked out a brilliant way to speed the process up. It’s absolutely great. They’re speeding it up By Not Using It!

No more analysis of penalties and toenails. Nah. Just accept the on-pitch referee’s decision. That’ll do. I mean, the whole point of VAR is to get things correct. This latest guidance is, any way you look at it, ridiculous. But then it gives us something to distract from the lack of excitement on the pitch and leads us away from thinking about a competition that tests our patience and broadcasters who pretend it’s tremendous entertainment.

The ‘we just want to get the decisions right’ brigade must be up in arms.

After all, the whole point of the system was to unearth the ‘correct’ decisions from human frailty and make them right if called wrong, and many bought into this fundamentally flawed thinking. Though surely you want to get ALL decisions right, the choice to only apply VAR for moves leading to a goal, when there’s a perfectly logical case to be made that all play leads to a goal, not just the last phases, perplexingly seemed to make no sense to the acolytes.

Yeah, well, you can push your glasses back up your nose poindexter (one for the kids there), because they’re not going to use it unless they have to. At least this week.

So, as we saw in the West Ham v Villa game, even an incorrect penalty call will not be overturned. That certainly makes their decision quicker. So all these years pricking around – trying to placate those who claimed football was being ruined by incorrect decisions, especially managers – were, as we always knew, a waste of time and based on a stupid notion which thought putting another layer of admin into football was a good idea.

We always knew that if you give humans more opportunities to make mistakes, they simply make more mistakes.

To those who are mentally adrift that say ‘there’s nothing wrong with VAR, it’s the officials’ fault for not using it properly’ I say, fine, let’s wait until VAR achieves consciousness and can think for itself. We’ll introduce it then. Of course it’s the people using it who are at fault! Who did you think was using it?! Did you think we were being critical of the software?! Seriously?!

Of course, this is just this week’s trend, it will change next week after another crazy decision. The PGMOL is nothing if not paranoid about its precious system. They haven’t been helped by the fact VAR was less obtrusive in the Euros, where they were barely involved and didn’t infect the system with too much of their crapulence. So we could debate the very principle of trying to adjudicate an analogue game digitally, but at least it wasn’t getting in the way so much.

But then here comes the hateful Premier League, replete with money and ‘best league in the world’ arrogance and elitism, to once again change the parameters merely to try and ensure their officials are not shown up as inadequate.

Their claim that four out of five people love VAR and want to keep it is obviously a lie. First, which version of VAR are you talking about? There’s been about six. Second, most parts of the game want to get rid of it. Players are mystified by it, ex-player pundits don’t understand which version is in operation now, and want it banned, while managers just moan about it, like they did before it came in. Fans hate it for getting in the way of goal celebrations over decisions which would have been called correctly anyway and rulings against goals that are so marginal, you can’t even see them and no one can be said to have gained an advantage. And the rest of football is happily getting along without it.

It’s now so ludicrous that they’ve managed to alienate those few who still believe in it by messing around so much. Some want a hard version, complete with offside toenails and say in a nasal whine ‘I think you’ll find offside is offside’ like they have discovered a secret rune. Others want a lighter touch. What they’ve got is neither; this is VAR that does not overrule the ref, lets mistakes ride and when it does come into play, undermines the ref in principle, by sending them to the monitor and daring them to overrule it, instead of just calling it.

Twenty-five years or more ago, refereeing was much better. It seems as if the PGMOL – formed in 2001 – has steadily made everything worse as its profile has risen. And if you want proof, just watch Mike Dean’s woolly, flatulent, unsure, nervous-eyed performances on Soccer Saturday and compare them to Christina Unkel during ITV’s Euro coverage.

One comes over like your dad, guessing decisions from the sofa, the other a professional who knows the system inside and out, for good and bad, who is able to instantly articulate her analysis and even point out the flaws, to the appreciation of us all, except perhaps Mike Dean, who just looks hopelessly out of his depth.

It was an illustration that having an expert in a topic should be the default starting point, not just employing some flatulent old boy. It must drive younger, better refs to distraction having a man like Dean or Howard Webb, with all their limitations in such a high-profile position.

Changing the VAR methods again, and still getting it incorrect and making exactly the sort of wrong calls that led to VAR’s introduction in the first place, just isn’t acceptable. Disband the PGMOL, they’ve proven themselves not fit for purpose. And they’ve proved it often enough. How many excuses do they get before being abolished?