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By Thomas Word

This year’s Premier League season has been one to remember in the history of British soccer/football. We have seen a thrilling title race, dramatic wins, heartbreaking losses, and frequent controversy.

Controversy is far from uncommon in the Premier League, from multiple clubs violating financial fair play regulations to the recent disputes about decisions made by the league’s Virtual Assistant Referee (VAR).

VAR was first introduced into the Premier League during the 2018/19 season. The goal of VAR was to minimize the possibility of the referee missing or incorrectly calling a foul that could have major consequences on the outcome of a game. VAR uses an instant replay system to evaluate situations where a potential infringement of rules occurred. This allows the referee to change or affirm a decision that was difficult to call in the moment.  According to the Premier League website, VAR is used to monitor “goalkeeper encroachment on penalty kicks,” “player encroachment on penalty kicks,” “offsides,” and “referee review area,” which is a review of issued red cards and potential red card offenses. For a VAR check to successfully overturn a call, there must be “clear and obvious error” in the original decision.

What makes VAR different from other instant replay systems, like Booth Review in the NFL and Replay Review in the NBA, is that a VAR decision must be made very quickly. This is due to the fact that soccer has a continuous game clock. This means the clock never stops, even when play has stopped. This puts a strain on the officials to make sure that play is live for as much of the 90 minutes as possible. This pressure to come up with a decision quickly is usually what leads to an incorrect decision being made by the officiating staff. 

This season, fans have been left outraged by decisions made by the Premier League’s VAR system. Nearly every club has been affected by these conflicting and incorrect decisions, shaking the fans’ confidence in the system. 

One example of this was when Liverpool faced Tottenham back on September 30, 2023, early in the season. During a Liverpool counter-attack, Liverpool striker Luis Diaz made a run past the Tottenham defense and skillfully planted the ball in the back of the net. Unfortunately, the goal was incorrectly ruled offside by VAR, which led to his goal being disallowed. Liverpool fans were left furious by this decision, and the club ended up losing the game 1-2. The points dropped in this game would have been vital for Liverpool’s title race later in the season, but Liverpool eventually dropped too many points to challenge for this year’s Premier League title anyway. 

This glaring failure of the VAR system caused PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited), the refereeing association of the Premier League, to release a statement admitting fault for the incorrect call. The statement read:

“PGMOL acknowledge a significant human error occurred during the first half of Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool.”

In response to this, Liverpool released their own statement that conveyed their displeasure of the situation. Liverpool’s statement read:

“Such failings have already been categorized as ‘significant human error’ is also unacceptable. Any and all outcomes should be established only by the review and with full transparency.

This is vital for the reliability of future decision-making as it applies to all clubs with learnings being used to make improvements to processes in order to ensure this kind of situation cannot occur again.”

Unfortunately, Liverpool’s calls for improvement went unanswered. As the season progressed, there were many moments where VAR fumbled crucial calls that altered the outcomes of games. These missed calls sparked profound reactions all across the fanbase, and clubs even took to social media to argue against poorly-made calls. Premier League club Nottingham Forest fell victim to a poor VAR decision during their match against Everton in April and were very displeased. After the match, Nottingham Forest took to X to voice their irritation and released a fiery post that bordered on unprofessionalism: 

“Three extremely poor decisions – three penalties not given – which we simply cannot accept. We warned the PGMOL that the VAR is a Luton fan before the game but they didn’t change him. Our patience has been tested multiple times. NFFC will now consider its options.”

This behavior is highly unusual from any club playing at this level. In this tweet, Nottingham Forest are arguing that these poor refereeing decisions are due to the fact that the operator of the VAR system is a fan of rival club Luton Town FC, which is unlikely. This post demonstrates the pure frustration clubs were feeling this season due to the poor quality of the VAR system. The clubs argue that the Premier League is one of, if not the best, leagues in the world, and they expect a much higher quality of officiating than we saw this season.

I myself was very surprised with the sheer number of controversial decisions made by VAR this season. It seemed that every week there was a new controversy that altered the outcomes of games, and in a league that awards points for wins and draws, this is catastrophic to the integrity of the game. Fans and clubs of the Premier League are tired of this poor officiating, and change must come about to save the integrity of the Premier League. Now that the 2023/24 Premier League season has come to a close, I would not be surprised if there are significant alterations to the VAR system before the start of next season. 

Featured image credit: Deviant Art User Chicot101.