TECHNOLOGY WORKS ... IT’S THE HUMANS WHO ARE USELESS!

WELL, that didn’t last long. What was it? Four matches, maybe five, before VAR’s shortcomings were exposed? Actually, it wasn’t so much the V as the AR that stuffed up. the video, the technology, worked perfectly. Ran its little replay, got its angles just right. then the dumb old assistant referee came bumbling in and the system fell apart. It is not possible to correct human error with additional humans. the reason goal-line technology works perfectly is because science decides whether the ball has crossed the line and we butt out. On Wednesday, it was Mike Jones (above), the VAR for chelsea’s match with Norwich, who concluded Willian had not been tripped in the penalty area when, plainly, he had. In getting such a basic call wrong he did horrible damage to a process in its infancy. We accept when a referee makes a mistake. Graham Scott missed timm klose’s trip on Willian but it was real time, no re-runs. He has the sympathy of every neutral. But Jones? Armed with a bank of television screens and he still gets it wrong? this, we feel, is unacceptable. How useless are these referees? No wonder that nice Arsene Wenger ends up going berserk. the problem from here is that once the faith in VAR is shaken, players will no more accept it than the match referee’s word. they will not see the remote view as confirmation of fact but as another flawed perspective. Yet this was an accident waiting to happen. the rule-makers programmed a fault into the mechanism with the words ‘clear and obvious mistake’. Why not just ‘mistake’? What is wrong with correcting a mistake? Why does it have to be clear and obvious? Ninety per cent of the calls that need referral will be marginal; the tightest offside decisions, the lightest touch causing a fall in the penalty area. that is what happened between Willian and klose. Scott thought the attacker initiated contact, the replay shows klose’s tackle was to blame. Was it clear and obvious? No, because it only became so after two or three showings. But was it a mistake? Most certainly. So why did Jones have to consider semantics as well as the video footage? It is an unnecessary complication. A mistake is a mistake. correct it and justice is done.