VAR has ruined my life. I’ve survived Brexit, well, I am currently in the process of surviving it, the jury’s certainly still out on that one. And I’ve definitely survived Covid because I’m beyond caring about it. The cost of living crisis we’ll cope with, we have no choice. I’ll cut down on the caviar and vintage champagne if I have to but I’ll never stop buying diamond jewellery. There’s no gas, we’re on the verge of a world war, China’s gone maverick and the pound is currently worth about the same as a Burkino Faso centime. But VAR??

You just can’t cope with it. Don’t get it. Don’t need it. Hate it beyond my hatred even for some of my wife’s family. That much. And yet, why? Spurs have had a few decisions go against them, like yesterday’s terrible removal of our 3rd goal just because… well, because he was offside. Not even in that annoyingly, ultra-pedantic, VAR-type ‘offside’, but actually, you know, offside. But I reckon, in the few years of VAR, we’ve had far more decisions go our way than against. The outrageous decision 3 years ago against Manchester City in the Champions League which went in our favour should have been a forewarning of what lay in store with the ridiculous new system. That has since become ‘the best night of my life’. If not, 2 weeks ago at Chelsea exemplified everything that was and is wrong with VAR, all to Spurs benefit.

VAR was introduced to clarify ambiguity and to right wrongs. Instead it has proven to be ludicrously inconsistent, increasing the ambiguous and misreading the obvious. But of course, the implication is that this mystical acronym V.A.R. is some kind of magic box into which you put information and out of which comes definitive clarification. And its not. It is a camera. The output of which has to be viewed by a man. Sometimes a woman (but not yet, I think) and often a blind imbecile. Who takes so long to make his decisions that the entire nature and balance of the match is subsequently altered.

And then there’s the emotional. To have a goal taken away is devastating. After 4 or 5 minutes of Mr VAR agonising over his indecision, the impact is 100 times worse for the whole team. Which affects the way they then play.

We need a rethink. Until we can instal a system that is totally computerised (we can send a man to the moon FFS, how hard can this be? Ok, America can’t, currently, but they will one day soon, I’m sure, once shit has been bound together in Florida) we should abandon VAR as a tragically failed experiment which has had far more negatives than positives.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx