VAR: What difference has it made to the Premier League?

VAR has changed the Premier League, but not yet in the ways nearly everyone thought it would.

Most pundits, fans and bettors said there would be more goals, penalties, red cards and stoppages, fewer offsides. So far the only meaningful rise has been in stoppages. Offsides have gone down, but not a lot.

A different, characteristically wise note was sounded in The Big Kick-Off, the Racing Post’s pre-season pullout, by my colleague Mark Langdon. He was more cautious about what might change. “Statistics suggest there is no obvious correlation between video refs and penalties in France, Germany, Italy or Spain,” he wrote.

Former Premier League referee Mark Halsey had told him: “On the subject of penalties I don’t think we will get too many more domestically this season.”

Reflecting now, the rest of us should not be surprised to find that VAR has changed the Premier League but not in the ways that logic seemed to suggest were most likely.

Its consequences were not clear and obvious. What VAR does is add another layer of uncertainty to every match. And uncertainty by its nature can change things in ways we might not have anticipated.

You can bet on all of the ways in which most bettors thought VAR would change the Premier League.

So let us go through them one by one. I compared the first eight rounds of this season with the first eight rounds of last season, checking as well whether the first eight rounds of last season had been unusual in any respect.

Goals first. There were 230 goals in the first eight rounds of this season, five more than the 225 scored in the first eight rounds of last season. Goals per game rose to just under 2.9 from just over 2.8. This is not significant.

Anyway the extra goals do not seem to have come from VAR. If you reviewed every occasion on which the ball ended up in the net I think you would find that VAR has more often ruled out goals that otherwise would have stood than it has ruled in goals that otherwise would have been disallowed.

Penalties and red cards have not increased under VAR

Referees awarded 19 penalties in the first eight rounds of this season, seven fewer than the 26 awarded in the first eight rounds of last season. However the number of spot-kicks in the early weeks of last season was unusually high.

In the first eight rounds of this season penalties were awarded at the rate of roughly one every four games, which is the rate at which they had been awarded over the whole of the previous ten seasons.

VARs are not changing penalty decisions. If the referee points to the spot a penalty is taken, and if he does not it is not. VARs seem to be saying to themselves: “The decision was not clearly and obviously wrong if somebody could have given it. And somebody could have given it because this referee just has.” So penalties have not become more common.

Nor have red cards. Twelve players were sent off in the first eight rounds of this season, down from the 14 sent off in the opening eight rounds of last season. The dismissal-rate this season has been roughly one every seven games, slower than roughly one every six games in the same period last season. Across the first eight rounds of all of the previous ten seasons the dismissal rate was somewhere between one every six games and one every seven games.

Stoppage time has risen. Total stoppage time – first and second-half combined – was up by an average of 40 seconds per match compared with the initial eight rounds of last season – up by 50 seconds compared with the whole of the last three seasons.

Less than a minute might not sound like an awful lot. In this context, though, averages may not be the most illuminating of metrics. Because the extra stoppage time has not been spread evenly throughout all games but squashed into a few games where there were long VAR reviews. And not all lost time, perhaps, has been added on.

Offsides in the first eight rounds of this season averaged 3.5 per game, down from 3.8 per game in the first eight rounds of last season. However offside flags in the early weeks of last season were unusually rare. Over the whole of the last six seasons offsides averaged 4.0 per game. So it might be better to say that offside calls this season have been reduced by about 0.5 per game. Or one every two games.

That is not a lot. The reason an offside flag waving in the air has not been seen even less frequently is that assistant referees do not let play go on – as they should – when they think an attacker is offside but there is a good chance the ball could end up in the back of the net. They could be wrong. If they are wrong but do not flag, VAR should not later give the offside. And any goal should stand.

One of the maddening things about being wrong is that it can happen even when you are really confident you were right. As nearly everybody was at the start of the season about the consequences of VAR in the Premier League.

Today's top sports betting stories

Follow us on Twitter @racingpostsport

Like us on Facebook RacingPostSport