Premier League grounds are full now but VAR will soon make football unwatchable

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IF you think VAR has been particularly torturous of late, then wait until the World Cup kicks off where corners and second yellow cards are being added to the VAR system’s remit. Throw in the hydration breaks and some games might not end on the day they began.

Seriously, prepare yourself for some laborious viewing over the five weeks of the 2026 tournament. If you wanted to be optimistic about the flow of the matches being half-decent, you could cling to the hope that everyone else’s use of VAR appears slicker than its use in England and Scotland.

But even so, adjudicating on corners and the legitimacy of a second yellow card will only add to the delays. And it is those delays that are turning VAR from what it should be - a help to fairness in football - into a scourge of the game, particularly on these shores.

Quite simply, the recent workings of VAR have been so poor that they are beating those of us who initially felt it would be a development for good into submission. Even the strongest advocates of VAR, like myself, must have had any enthusiasm for its existence well and truly dampened.

The two high-profile incidents in England and Scotland last week were billboards for how VAR has become painfully out of control and unfit for purpose. The time it took to rule out the Callum Wilson effort for West Ham against Arsenal last Sunday - if you include the time it took Chris Kavanagh at the monitor - was in excess of four minutes.

That simply cannot tally with the philosophy of VAR correcting obvious errors. Perhaps there is an unwritten time constraint elsewhere because it always seems speedier in other leagues, but a written one is needed. If you can’t come to a decision inside, say, 90 seconds, then there is no decision to be made.

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Try looking at something for 90 seconds now. It is long enough. And then there is what should be the overarching principle. VAR should be looking for the very obvious mistake, not looking for the slightest shred of illegality.

And there could only have been the very slightest shred of illegality when Sam Nicholson was adjudged to have handled the ball inside the Motherwell box against Celtic in the penultimate round of Scottish Premiership fixtures. Gary Lineker said: “This might be the worst VAR decision I’ve seen (and there’s a lot of competition.)”

And he was right on both fronts. We keep getting told about protocol and how they are sticking to it. But that was a decision which ultimately resulted in Celtic winning the title, and Hearts going without.

A couple of days after the West Ham-Arsenal game, Howard Webb said: “It takes a bit of time because they go through a process diligently. Because they really respect the game.”

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But so much of what VAR does is not going through a process, it is going beyond its original remit from seven Premier League seasons ago. And they will go further beyond the original remit at the World Cup.

No matter what the Premier League says, when that is done, it will come here at some stage. There has to be kick-back at some stage.

Premier League grounds are, mostly, still full, and the TV deals are still very lucrative. But taking those things for granted is dangerous.

Yes, people are still watching the increasingly unwatchable but there will come a time when they will turn off. And that time will not be too far off if VAR is allowed to get more and more out of control.