Troy Deeney: It’s time for VAR to be scrapped, the best moment of my career never would have happened if it existed

6 months ago 61

I’VE reached the end of my tether with VAR and I’d love to see it scrapped.

I think most players and the vast majority of match-going fans would say the same.

Troy Deeney netted this momentous but controversial goal for Watford vs Leicester in the 2013 Championship semi-final play-offs[/caption]

Deeney believes this ‘absolute, glorious carnage’ following his famous strike would have been curtailed by VAR as it came after a ref error[/caption]

Tottenham’s Eric Dier had a goal rightly disallowed in a controversial 4-1 loss vs Chelsea but the VAR check took ridiculously long[/caption]

It’s as if Premier League chiefs have said, ‘We’ve got this wonderful product, which is lapped up the world over and is an excellent fan experience to enjoy live, so how are we going to f*** it all up?’

Football, at its best, is pure chaos. If I think back to probably the most memorable moment of my career — the climax of the Championship play-off semi-final between Watford and Leicester in 2013 — it all came about because of a refereeing error.

Anthony Knockaert of Leicester dived to win a penalty, his spot-kick was saved by our keeper Manuel Almunia, and we went straight down the other end where I scored the goal which sent us to Wembley.

Vicarage Road erupted in euphoria. It was absolute, glorious carnage. And nobody who was there will ever forget it.

But that sequence of events probably wouldn’t have happened now.

Knockaert’s tumble would have been analysed to death for five minutes and the penalty probably wouldn’t have been given.

With VAR, we are attempting to provide this perfect sanitised game and that isn’t what football is about.

Take Monday night’s game between Tottenham and Chelsea, with nine VAR checks, most of them far longer than necessary, with both players and supporters standing around not having a clue what was going on, and then 20-odd minutes of injury-time.

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This is NOT the game I fell in love with.

When Spurs player Eric Dier had a goal disallowed in the second half, he was clearly offside, but it took VAR several minutes to reach that decision.

It’s like if I go into a coffee shop and the bloke in front of me is ordering a choco mocha latte, or whatever those fancy coffees are called, and so we all have to wait five minutes.

But after all that hanging around for the barista to act like Tom Cruise, it just tastes like a normal cup of coffee.

Sometimes there’s no point in waiting around for a ridiculous amount of time.

I played in the Premier League during the first season of VAR in 2019-20 and I actually didn’t mind it.

But since then I have witnessed a huge drop in refereeing standards.

Refs have lost the courage to make decisions, they no longer trust their instincts, and they have lost authority as a result.

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta raged as a triple VAR check, including for this challenge by Joelinton on Gabriel, failed to erase Anthony Gordon’s Toon winner[/caption]

They see a 50-50 call and rely on VAR to get them out of a hole — but often the VAR decision is worse than a spontaneous on-field call.

Of course I would moan at refs when I played in the top-flight but I genuinely believed we had a high standard of officiating before VAR.

The likes of Martin Atkinson, Mark Clattenburg and Michael Oliver — who was actually the ref conned by Knockaert at Vicarage Road — were generally excellent. Those standards have dropped, largely because of the effect of VAR.

And let’s talk about the idea of ‘winning’ a penalty, of inviting contact and going down, which I’d describe as professionalism rather than cheating.

VAR was supposed to make that far more difficult but I’d say it’s actually made it easier.

There were certain opponents — and as an example I’d use David Luiz of Chelsea, Arsenal and Brazil — who you knew you had a chance of winning a penalty against.

Luiz was a brilliant footballer but he would also have a tendency to dive in to tackles or to dangle a leg if you were running past him, so you’d try to take advantage of that and invite referees to make a decision.

Everywhere you look, VAR is leading to less respect for refs, worse decision-making and a worse experience for fans.

With the super slo-mo they use in VAR decisions today, a defender’s challenge often looks worse than it actually is, so you are probably more likely to win a penalty.

So many decisions are subjective, so you are never going to get perfection in decision-making.

I did sympathise with Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta losing his rag following Newcastle’s winning goal last weekend — there were three or four reasons why it could have been ruled out but none of them were conclusive.

So he had a rant in the heat of the moment out of pure frustration.

Arteta described refereeing standards as ‘embarrassing’ but what was more embarrassing to me was Arsenal issuing a statement the following day backing up his complaint.

That sort of thing just lessens the authority of referees even more.

Everywhere you look, VAR is leading to less respect for refs, worse decision-making and a worse experience for fans inside Premier League stadiums.

I don’t think it’s ever going to happen, because it would be seen as a backwards step, but I’d rather see it scrapped so that we can all embrace the chaos again.

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