Jim Boardman

Every week, almost every game, something happens and VAR gets blamed, whether for interfering or for not stepping in. The tech doesn’t make the decisions, a professional referee does, and it really isn’t that difficult to let teams and fans know why that decision was made. Clubs should be able to ask for recordings of key decisions to be made public, with an explanation of the laws applied if needed, then everyone can hear what the thinking behind the decision was. It shouldn’t be Howard Webb cherry picking the ones he wants to share - and there should be minimal delay in sharing them. No doubt we’ll hear more admissions of mistakes being made, but unless the PGMOL really do have something to hide it’s probably not that many. It’s more likely decisions are being made because of the application of some specific part of a law, or restriction on the use of VAR, that most of us didn’t fully understand or know about. Or maybe knew about but didn’t agree with. So much of the frustration around these decisions is down to not knowing why a decision was made, knowing we’ll probably never find out why, knowing that it will happen again next game and knowing that these things don’t really “even out over the course of the season”. The “never explain, fine anyone who complains” policy pre-dates VAR, it should have been wiped out as soon as VAR came in.

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