Johnny Nic has been opposing VAR for years and things are only getting worse. Erik ten Hag would probably join the choir now.

If there’s one thing that’s been badly and wrongly named, it’s the Premier League, which is clearly not top-notch; He gets himself into the mud every week with integrity-challenging VAR decisions that question the results of many matches.

This weekend’s matches against Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham, cursed by an inadequate system, were no different, each resulting in scoreline-altering decisions.

This is what happens when you try to appease the pedants and poindextors. While the referees accepted the difficulties of the job, they transformed themselves into semi-strong, cowardly officials; their powers and abilities were also significantly reduced.

And don’t these hopeless and sad sacks know this? This is not an anti-referee complaint; They are victims of VAR along with football. No decision they make is final as VAR can challenge them and neutralize them instantly. They are sent to the monitor because the VAR says they made a bad decision. Or they don’t decide because they know the cameras will save them. Or they just stand there, staring blankly into space, trying to make a decision, while the VARs point at their screens like kids in their bedrooms.

Remember when people cursed me as a luddite before I was introduced because I knew what was going to happen? They don’t do it anymore. Because all the exhortations to ‘I just want to get the decisions right’ have proven to be misleading, with VAR getting things wrong time and time again, often with really obvious things happening that change results and league positions or screw managers up. As Erik ten Hag learned.

It is difficult to be convinced that the purpose of VAR is not to find a reason to disallow every goal, because VAR checks everything, often finding ridiculous handballs or offsides that are impossible to see with the naked eye and that no one can take advantage of. next advantage. You can’t judge a game fairly on a micro level. If you can’t see, you can’t give. It may be against the law if you look under an electron microscope, but how fair is that? Many things in football are subjective, but we have been sold a system that claims to be objective. This is a lie. We replaced a fast subjective decision on the field with a slow subjective decision off the field. How is this better?

It was claimed that the system could do things it could not actually do. There are just guys looking at screens, it’s not a complex system. Why put faith in something that can so obviously be wrong? So much so that, even though it is said to work, it is actually almost never used. A working VAR is a VAR that is never used.

Fractional offsides or offsides, although not clearly obvious, keep the game afloat as much as the ‘clear and obvious’ errors that are addressed. They just lied about deciding these things. Arsenal were rightfully awarded a goal, but if Liverpool’s foot had been three inches behind they would have been offside even if Arsenal could not have gained an additional advantage from offside and this had been ignored. Why enforce rules when they are violated when that violation has no effect? This is not the reason behind any rule.

Every time a goal is scored, the cloud of fear of VAR hangs over everything. All joy disappears. As the nerdy boys pull out their rulers, coitus is interrupted when the ball hits the net. Those who think that a marginal offside is still offside have spoiled the first class game with their hasty and overly focused thinking; just as those who voted for Brexit destroyed European trade and refused to admit their mistakes, clinging to their decisions, lying. They couldn’t face the fact that they had ruined everything because of an ignorant – some might say stupid – unworldly choice.

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VAR is getting worse every year. Ironically, it’s getting slow/inaccurate enough now; if referees got it wrong that often people would want VAR to step in. So it makes inappropriate decisions, wrong decisions and meaningless decisions, which leads to endless rule changes, especially in handball now where there is so much confusion that no one has a clear idea of ​​what it means and it is still judged differently from game to game. It was clear before VAR that unfair and unfair decisions were made. And the results were changed due to random calls that were not called in another game, leading to the game being more inconsistent than ever. That’s exactly what he was brought in as an outlaw.

As long as they stick to VAR, top-flight football will forever be worse than it needs to be. They make their product worse but they don’t care because they have become slaves to TV money and it creates more and more content for them. The game doesn’t matter, only the money matters. If it was a matter of improving decisions, he would be long gone. The truth is, it doesn’t explain why he’s still with us.

And if you still support this, or prefer a twisted variation involving the captains’ challenge, you’re stuck with a mistake. VAR was and still is 10 times worse than straight refereeing in the lower leagues. Yes, mistakes are made, but it’s better at every level. It’s time to suspend the system that proves unfit for purpose every match day and is hated by most fans. Maintaining a system that is opposed by the most shows disrespect for everyone.

Believe it or not, our Johnny is a popular crime writer and his latest novel is heretogether on Kindle.