Will there ever be a solution to the jumbled mess of VAR?

Josh King's cruelly disallowed goal shows how one person's wrong conclusion can still cause havoc

It feels like a lot has happened since last Saturday's VAR farce at Stamford Bridge, as Josh King's perfectly good goal was chalked off for the simple crime of Rodrigo Muniz being unable to avoid the force of gravity.

Of course, there was a lot of press about the incident. Danny Murphy said “he couldn’t remember a worse VAR decision”, which even with my massively biased Fulham hat on, I don't know how you can say it's the worst after 2023’s Luis Diaz disallowed goal against Spurs.

While all Chelsea fans I've spoken to since the game acknowledge that they got away with one, there are always of course some idiots online who are so blinded by their allegiances they can't see what's in front of them.

Some of the debate was about the incident getting much more traction because it was an 18 year old who scored the goal and that nobody would care if another player had scored. Some even suggested that Fulham fans thought it should stand just because it was Josh who scored.

Quite obviously, that is nonsense. The fact it was Josh's goal that was cruelly snatched away is a catastrophic symptom of VAR. A sign that when mistakes are made, great moments that everyone loves to see are taken away.

If Fulham had gone on to win the game (big if I know) Josh’s goal would have gone down in Premier League folklore alongside Wayne Rooney, Danny Rose and Federico Macheda. VAR's flaws are damaging the product that the PL has cultivated so carefully.

Then there was the now customary apology from PGMOL and the release of the VAR tapes, which if you haven't seen, are watchable below.

The recording, for me, is absolutely damning. The slow motion crash is painful to watch as Michael Salisbury (Sal) managed to convince everyone else of his flawed opinion. The way he completely dismissed the assistant's correct take is astounding.

After the game, as I walked down the Fulham Road with Elizabeth Barnard, we had a long and existential chat about VAR. I said that, despite the decision, I ultimately still think some sort of technology is a good thing. Elizabeth shared a point of view that I'd not fully considered before and that's the fact that humans can't ever be trusted to use the technology correctly and that's why she believes it should be scrapped.

My first instinct, probably quite a stereotypical male one, is to think 'but there must be a fix' - however after a few days of reflection and upon watching those tapes, I did actually wonder whether it's completely true. Maybe it's just human nature that we'll never get it right.

I think most football fans agree that 'clear and obvious errors' are what we're attempting to eradicate. It sounds so simple in practice doesn't it? The reality however, is so much more opaque.

Take Leny Yoro's goal against Fulham for Manchester United. Two hands in the back of Calvin Bassey, allowing for a fairly simple header into the goal.

I mean, I can clearly and obviously see that Yoro pushed Bassey, but then does it meet the 'high bar'? Is it a horrendous mistake? Well, no, pushing happens in the box all the time and maybe Calvin Bassey should be a bit stronger. Suddenly, a simple decision is tangled up in a jumbled mess.

Currently, the PGMOL is far too reactive when fixing a previous crisis - and it's part of the reason that I'm not sure the apologies and public scolding of officials is a great thing.

I am willing to wager decent money that in the next two-to-three game weeks there’s a goal that is allowed even though there's a really obvious foul in the build-up. To make things worse, it’ll be probably be in heartbreaking circumstances such as a top fourteam equalising against a newly-promoted side. The VAR will have the Josh King incident in the front of their minds and they'll be desperate to avoid a similar mistake.

After watching the King tapes with the referee mic recording, it's clear to me that the process is deeply, deeply flawed. Why are the referees talking so much to the VAR? Why are they still calling each other nicknames? It was so evident how easy it was for one flawed opinion to over-power all the other opinions in a matter of seconds.

Of course, lots of solutions are out there for how to fix VAR. Gary Lineker always talks about having an appeal/challenge system, time limits are a regular suggestion and scrapping it altogether is one, increasingly popular, opinion.

If VAR has to stay, then you have to remove ways for one wrong opinion to influence the panel. It's clear that Michael Salisbury interpreted that situation wrong, and look, that's understandable. We all are guilty, dozens of times per season, of jumping to a wrong conclusion. That's life - it happens.

If Michael Salisbury and the assistant VAR were working independently and they had to each give a green light to whether that was a mistake, it's clear that there would have been a 50/50 split. The chances of one referee seeing something wrong are fairly high, but the chances of two or three referees making the exact same mistake are incredibly slim.

Separating out the video assistants and creating some sort of adjudication system surely will help eradicate errors and ensure that only ‘clear and obvious’ mistakes are examined. They need to make the VAR process much more clinical, stop yapping so much and just be there to stop the on-pitch referee from dropping a howler.

I like Howard Webb and the way he fronts up to the challenges of VAR. The honesty and openness has been a refreshing change from the past. What I do wonder though is whether, as a former referee, he has all the qualities necessary to really implement VAR properly. When you see VAR's flaws, it's not necessarily a refereeing problem, but a problem with the system.

Now of course, it may just be the Howard is the face and there are systems analysts working on the process in the background, but what's alarming is that nearly two years after the infamous Luis Diaz incident, where miscommunication led to PGMOL's biggest crisis to date, it feels like the same mistakes are happening and the process doesn't seem to have evolved that much.

Maybe, as Elizabeth said, we should just scrap the whole thing and just admit that the utopia will never be achieved.