VAR has been a disaster in the Premier League. Every weekend there are a number of controversial incidents relating to the technology, with this week's slate of games no different.
David McGoldrick's goal was ruled offside for an incredibly harsh offside call, while Leicester were inexplicably denied a seemingly clear penalty during their clash with Arsenal.
VAR says no penalty! 😬
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We argued that the Premier League had made a huge mistake in how they have implemented the technology, most notably in their refusal to simply allow referees to review any incidents on a pitchside monitor.
It appears they could now move in that direction.
The BBC are reporting that referees' chief Mike Reilly is expected to inform Premier League clubs that referees will now be encouraged to use the pitchside monitors. They will then decide whether or not to overturn the original decision.
This is the method that is in use in most European leagues, as well as the Champions League and last year's World Cup.
All 20 teams will be present at a meeting with Reilly next week, where it expected that VAR will be the main focus of topic. It is believed that clubs are unhappy with the inconsistent application with the technology, with the way it is being used seemingly changing on a weekly basis.
After initially shying away from using pitchside monitors, this seemed like an obvious step to take. The Stockley Park experiment has largely been a failure, with the a number of questionable decisions made already this season.
The Premier League were worried about overriding the authority of the referee, but having a VAR official make every decision was always going to lead to such concerns. Allowing the on-pitch official to review the incident themselves should put an end to that issue.
While the time it would take to use the pitchside monitors was originally a worry, it surely couldn't be much worse than the 3 minute 47 second delay before disallowing David McGoldrick's goal yesterday.
