Premier League set for another confused campaign of anger… clubs work hard just to be denied by incompetent VAR chiefs

I HAD spent the summer desperately hoping VAR and the standard of Premier League officiating would improve this season.

But we’re one game in and it already looks like we are set for another campaign of anger and confusion caused by people who don’t understand the pain and anguish their mistakes cause.

Newcastle’s Fabian Schar was sent off for a “headbutt” on Southampton’s Ben Brereton Diaz — even though the Saints striker thrust his head forward with as much “force” as Schar.

Yet at Arsenal, Wolves’ Yerson Mosquera was not even booked despite appearing to strangle Kai Havertz and squeezing Gabriel Jesus’ backside!

So infuriating VAR inconsistencies are back, it seems.

And just when it could have been put to proper use at Brentford to award Crystal Palace a perfectly good goal, VAR was not allowed to get involved because on-field ref Sam Barrott had blown his whistle too early. Seriously?

Eberechi Eze’s brilliant free-kick flew in but was ruled out for a perceived foul on Nathan Collins by Will Hughes.

But replays showed that if any offence had occurred at all, it was most likely Collins who fouled Hughes.

And had Barrott waited until the ball went in before blowing up, VAR could have helped him to get it right.

That’s not to mention the farce at Everton where during the first game of the season, the VAR monitor wasn’t working.

That left on-field ref Simon Hooper having to stare at a backup laptop to correctly overturn his decision to award the Toffees a penalty. Chaos.

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No referee or VAR sets out to deprive teams of goals, deliberately award dodgy penalties or send players off for no reason.

They are honest, genuine mistakes. But that’s what VAR was supposed to sort out. Instead, it has made things worse.

With all the revenue at stake from the Prem being the most watched league in the world, VAR is well below an acceptable standard.

We want eyes on our league, and we cannot afford to risk people turning off because they hate the impact VAR is having.

The whole thing needs a complete rethink and a fresh approach.

Sadly, as the summer is the best time to implement change, it seems that ship has sailed for another 12 months.

There doesn’t seem to be any logic on when VAR intervenes.

It seems to miss lots of obvious incidents but then gets involved when it’s almost impossible to tell whether an offence has been committed or not.

Then when they take seven minutes to look at something from every angle and STILL get it wrong, it’s hard to swallow.

We had an incident last season at West Ham where Tomas Soucek had a goal disallowed against Aston Villa for handball.

I was stunned to later read the audio transcripts — VAR was initially checking to see if it was handball by Jarrod Bowen, but ruled that out so decided to look for other reasons not to give the goal, like offside.

The VAR operator said he looked for handball because “that would have been an easier one to potentially have given” as a reason not to award the goal.

What? That’s not your job. Your job is to judge if the referees made an error, not to look for other reasons to rule goals out.

That is re-refereeing the game, which is what it feels like they are doing a lot of the time, and that’s no good.

Arguably VAR’s biggest crime is its impact on supporters not being able to celebrate goals because they have no idea if they will stand.

A West Ham fan told me recently he did not celebrate Bowen’s historic late winner in last year’s Europa Conference League final because he thought it was going to be ruled offside.

What should have been one of the best moments of his life was dampened by a fear of VAR.

I also want to see the PGMOL give more honest appraisals of the quality of officials and the decisions they make.

I felt like I must have written to PGMOL boss Howard Webb about four times a month last season for his observations on decisions involving West Ham.

I would always get the same reply: “Our panel looked at it, and by two-to-one they didn’t agree in your favour.”

It feels like the PGMOL are marking their own homework which is not right.

None of them have ever run a football club so they don’t understand the anger and frustration of being denied a goal or a penalty or having spurious ones given against you.

When you’ve spent hundreds of millions of pounds and done so much hard work to give yourselves the best possible chance of success, I cannot describe how frustrating it is to be denied by someone who can’t look at a screen properly.

The clubs, players and fans are doing their best and our referees and VARs should be doing the same.