U-TURN WARNING! I liked the idea of VAR... now I want to see it booted into touch immediately

FEW people were more in favour of the introduction of VAR than I was.

And since it was brought into our game few have defended it, supported it, and lauded it more than me.

That’s why regular readers might want to brace themselves for this one because I’m about to pull a major U-turn by calling for an overhaul of the technology or for it to be booted into touch altogether.

The theory of VAR, I love. The idea that, as a player, supporter or pundit, I could walk away from a game knowing the correct decisions had been made appeals greatly.

But VAR is being found wanting far too often.

It took around two minutes for an Aston Villa goal to be chalked off on Saturday once they’d wound back far enough to find a foul (right).

And on Sunday we had the fall-out from Marcus Rashford’s goal for Manchester United against Liverpool (above, middle).

I actually thought giving a free-kick for the foul by Victor

Lindelof on Divock Origi (above) would have been soft anyway.

But the fact remains United still had to work the ball 60odd yards upfield before scoring, so why were they checking the challenge on Origi in the first place?

What I do know is that people are having too many conversations about too many things surrounding VAR and that the end – a slight, rather than major, increase in ‘key match incidents’ being called right – isn’t justifying the means.

So I’d like to see its use cut back to the 18-yard box only for, say, the next 18 months.

If we’re still wading through treacle by then I’d get rid of it completely and limit the use of technology in our game to the goalline only.

We’d be better pumping the money spent on VAR into making sure we’ve got younger, more highly-trained, referees. We could introduce a new ‘respect the ref ’ campaign before the season started and I’d actually assemble all of the Premier League whistlers in a TV studio ahead of the campaign.

I’d get them talking about why they got into refereeing, in the first place, why they love football, maybe even persuade them to tell a few stories so we could get to know them a bit better.

A few years ago I went to Trinidad & Tobago on a PFA trip that Premier League referees Andre Marriner and Martin Atkinson were on, and seeing them by the pool in their shorts or in jeans and T-shirts around the hotel lobby seemed a bit unusual.

It made me think that, actually, referees have been dehumanised because they are so shielded from the media.

They’re the only people who haven’t been able to have their say on major incidents since multiple replays were introduced despite being the ones who made the decisions, and that can’t be right.

But if they were brought out after games to explain their decisions I’m sure most of us would accept what they were saying.

Clearly, more and more of us who supported VAR’s introduction are now losing faith in it.

So maybe now it’s time to put that faith back in the hands of those the technology was supposed to help.