For some though, it is simple – rather than VAR being a solution for wrong decisions, they would argue officials just need to get things right.<\/p>\n
When asked on Match of the Day Live whether the errors at Villa Park put him in favour of VAR, ex-Newcastle striker Alan Shearer, said: “No. I would like the officials to do their job properly. It is not too much to ask, is it?<\/p>\n
“If you ever needed any evidence of the damage that VAR has done to referees, I think Saturday is a great example of that. <\/p>\n
“These guys look petrified to make a decision because they didn’t have a comfort blanket.<\/p>\n
“For me, [referees’ decisions] are actually getting worse.”<\/p>\n
Former Newcastle and Aston Villa goalkeeper Shay Given added on Match of the Day: “It shows you why we use VAR. A lot of decisions the officials got wrong at Villa Park. VAR is like a comfort blanket for referees. <\/p>\n
“The decision is taken away from the officials. The linesman has been told all season not to put their flag up, so their brain has been trained. I think it shows VAR is a help even though we complain about it most weeks.”<\/p>\n
When asked whether football had become too reliant on VAR, Howe had some sympathy with the argument.<\/p>\n
“There is an argument to say yes,” he said. “Because when VAR is there, there is a tendency to think ‘oh well I won’t give that because VAR is there to check it’.<\/p>\n
“Then your decision making isn’t as sharp as it would normally have to be. Maybe there is a difference there. I would probably say you are right in that respect.”<\/p>\n
But former referee Graham Scott feels it is unfair to claim officials hide behind VAR.<\/p>\n
“I really don’t think that’s fair,” he said on the Wayne Rooney Show.<\/p>\n
“Obviously I work with them closely and I know these guys and they’re not like that. It’s not how their minds work, not how their processes work. <\/p>\n
“I spent half my career with VAR and half without it – the other way around of course, without it first. <\/p>\n
“And then when I was in the Premier League I was still dropping into the Championship quite often. So you’re in and out, in and out. And your processes essentially stay the same. <\/p>\n
“What has changed though is with VAR you don’t have that spell in a game where you know you’ve made a really big error and you now have to reset and go again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some though, it is simple – rather than VAR being a solution for wrong decisions, they would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-477380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}