Liverpool must back Wolves to the hilt - it's time for the Premier League to ditch VAR

The numbers will tell you that VAR has vastly improved decision-making in the Premier League. That's simply not true, and Liverpool should seize on an unexpected chance to oust it from the game.

It seemed as though the moment to truly resist VAR had been and gone. Jamie Carragher was one of many big-name figures to throw his weight behind a radical reduction of the technology's remit earlier this season, but it was hard to envisage a scenario where the league genuinely facilitated that debate.

But Wolves have forced the issue. It has formally tabled a proposal to remove VAR from the Premier League, and that will prompt a vote on the issue at the summer's AGM. It will require 14 votes out of 20 to pass.

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Liverpool must back Wolves to the hilt. It has to be said that the Midlands side sees its stance a little watered down by the fact that it has undoubtedly been among the worst-affected by VAR — as a team that falls somewhere in the middle, the Reds would strengthen the case.

Because while self-interest may be driving Wolves, the arguments it puts forward are compelling. VAR has not helped the game in the way the clubs assumed it would when they ushered it through in the first place.

Don't blindly trust the numbers

Those in favor of VAR are seemingly able to blithely trot out statistics year-on-year that show the accuracy of the technology is steadily improving. But can we trust them?

We don't want to descend into mad conspiracy theory territory here, but one of the major problems of VAR is that it introduces a whole new layer of subjectivity. Not only are we asking the video referees whether a foul has been committed, we are asking them to determine if there has been a 'clear and obvious error'.

Ironically, that makes it harder to definitively say that VAR itself has made an error. Each week, certain mistakes are officially logged, but a decision has to be patently wrong in order for that verdict to be delivered. It's pretty difficult to say that a video official was objectively wrong in his subjective decision that an on-field call was 'clearly and obviously' incorrect.

Take the Jérémy Doku kick on Alexis Mac Allister. That's not been logged as a VAR error, so it goes down in the statistics as another win (or at least non-loss) for the technology, as a correct non-intervention. But Liverpool will certainly feel that it should have been a penalty, and the fact that officials have been able to look at all of the angles and have still not given it only heightens the sense of injustice.

Liverpool has lost at least one title thanks to VAR's failure to intervene; the system will never be perfect, but equipping referees with every conceivable angle emboldens fans to demand perfection, and increases the outrage when the officials inevitably fall short. This only feeds into the toxicity of the refereeing landscape (although it should be noted that it's a problem all the way down to grassroots, where there is no technology to be seen).

VAR causes delays

This is probably the one argument that has remained steady from the moment the VAR technology was first floated, and it remains one of the most compelling. Wolves put it succinctly in their list of 'negative consequences':

• Impact on goal celebrations and the spontaneous passion that makes football special.

• Frustration and confusion inside stadiums due to lengthy VAR checks and poor communication.

There's only so much more to add here. But suffice to say that even if VAR has led to a few more correct decisions, it still seems like a raw deal. Of course, the argument has its limits — I was at the Carabao Cup final, and was among the thousands of Liverpool fans to show no restraint whatsoever in celebrating Virgil van Dijk's ultimately disallowed goal. Then again, with that still fresh in the memory, the initial celebrations for the eventual extra-time winner were laced with that slightest bit of nagging uncertainty.

A whole new layer of unfairness

Even when the VAR technology works as intended, it comes with fundamental problems. There are certain arguments that defy the 'we can improve it' response.

To a certain extent, the delays argument falls into that category. Checking decisions will always be slower than not checking. But it's true that innovations like semi-automated offsides will speed things up.

But one thing that VAR will always do is add a whole new layer of unfairness. No proposal could rectify it. Back when the decision lay entirely with the on-field officials, the only injustice that could happen would be getting that decision wrong. Now, we are increasingly deep into a multi-tiered system which allows more unfairness to seep into the game.

There is no theoretical reason for VAR not to intervene on issues like yellow cards, or even the most trivial of offences. The reasons for limiting the technology's scope are practical: to manage delays and keep matches flowing at a tolerable pace.

Nobody would suggest that the bar for interventions should be lowered, for that very reason. Indeed, part of the Wolves complaint is that VAR is already 'overanalyzing'. But the issue that arises is that it is fundamentally unfair to correct some errors and leave others alone based on no material distinction.

An apt example comes from Arsenal's late win over Brentford earlier this year. Kai Havertz was on a yellow card, and clearly dived in the box to try and win a penalty.

Had on-field referee awarded the spot kick, VAR would have been 'activated', and could have recommended overturning the original decision and instead showing a second yellow card. Instead, the protocol prevented any intervention, and Havertz went on to score the winner.

There are more mundane examples in every single game. The on-field referee will always get at least one thing wrong, however trivial it may be. But wherever you draw the line on where VAR can get involved, you split the game in two.

A word of warning

While the Wolves proposal is very welcome, it's still a little difficult to imagine the Premier League squeezing back the other way through the looking glass. VAR should never have come in, but now that it's here, it will be hard to shake off.

Even if Liverpool and others back Wolves, and the motion passes, the increased scrutiny that VAR has brought with it will not dissipate overnight. Each time a referee makes a bad decision — and there will be some more howlers — it will prompt a tedious talking point about how technology would have rectified the error.

On the whole, I still strongly feel that Liverpool should support Wolves, because I fundamentally agree that VAR has made the game worse. But getting rid of it now will not fix all of the problems either, and even the most ardent detractors of the technology have to accept that.