The British professional arbitration board admitted that VAR made 4 mistakes in the first 12 rounds of the 2019/2020 season.
VAR Premier League made 4 mistakes that made MU benefited while Chelsea and Arsenal were disadvantaged.
Mr. Mike Riley, General Director of the British Professional Arbitration Board (PGMOL) had a meeting with representatives of clubs to assess the use of VAR in the first 12 rounds of the English Premier League this season. He acknowledged that of the 28 referees who changed their decision thanks to VAR intervention, four were “wrongly whistle-blown”.
Among the errors mentioned, there were three penalties for MU (against Norwich), Brighton (against Everton) and Watford (against Chelsea), PGMOL acknowledged that those collisions were not fouls. The remaining situation is Arsenal’s unrecognized goal against Crystal Palace, VAR caused the referee to penalize Calum Chambers.
The 2019/2020 season is the first season the Premier League uses VAR.
VAR’s singular errors remind fans that this is not exactly the right and wrong technology like Goal-line or Hawk-eye, calling “VAR technology” wrong. VAR is a team of referees who analyze multi-angle video footage to advise the referees to avoid making mistakes in key situations of the game (e.g. leading to a goal, penalty or red card).
“We are still far from reaching perfection and improving our way of doing things,” said Mike Riley. “The worst case scenario is when the referee on the pitch makes the right decision but VAR intervenes again leading to the wrong decision. There is still a lot we need to do to improve efficiency.”
The former Premier League referees said that not using the screen outside the boundary to allow the referee to personally watch the video did not seem to be a reasonable choice. PGMOL and the Premier League Organizing Committee will study more options to reduce the time of interrupting the match when VAR intervenes, and minimize errors.