Should VAR stay or go: Here is what our reporters have had to say

Every week there is a new debate around the technology, whether it is working and whether it has improved the game.

Now the debate will continue into the summer break - after Wolves tabled a proposal to scrap VAR.

It comes after the club were on the wrong end of a number of VAR decisions across the course of the campaign.

The proposal will be discussed at the Premier League AGM on June 6, and ahead of that we asked our reporters what they think of VAR, and whether they believe it should be scrapped.

Liam Keen - Wolves correspondent

After five seasons of VAR in the Premier League, the question everyone should ask themselves is whether it has improved the game.

The governing bodies encouraged everyone to be patient with the technology and that they would need time to get it right.

But frankly, it has added nothing positive to the game and improvements seem a long way off.

Top flight clubs voted to introduce semi-automated offsides and if it works as advertised, it will be a benefit. Goal line technology has also improved football as a game.

But the way VAR is being used is detrimental to the spirit of the game and the sport we all love.

It was brought in to improve accuracy, but it has not worked. On top of that, it is ruining the atmospheres in stadiums, creating a bigger divide between supporters and the game they love, and robbing clubs of magical moments.

Too many subjective decisions are being scrutinised by VAR and the inconsistency in decisions means the narrative around games is always down to VAR, while the time taken to get to decisions is laughable.

Human error will occur whether VAR is there or not. As a result, there is only one answer in VAR's current form - scrap it, sacrifice a potentially small increase in accuracy and return to spontaneous sporting moments that make the beautiful game so special.

Matt Maher - Chief sports writer and Aston Villa correspondent

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a piece written in late 2020 following another weekend of VAR-related controversy.

The main complaints were the length of time taken in making decisions, the lack of information provided inside stadiums and most of all the inconsistency in officiating calls.

Nearly three-and–a-half years on, almost nothing has changed. If you were to jump in a time machine and travel to late 2027, I would wager you would find very similar pieces being published.

That’s because when it comes to ruling on subjective decisions, video technology and football are essentially incompatible.

Sure, the use of Hawkeye on the goal-line is near faultless (with one famous exception), while the introduction of automated offsides from next season will also be beneficial provided it works as promised.

But using video replay to essentially re-referee decisions based on opinion? That was never going to work. There is a reason the NFL abandoned attempts to use it for subjective calls.

So long as the replays are being watched and judged by humans, there will always be controversy. All VAR has done is shift the focus of frustration away from the on-field official to one sat miles away in a west London industrial estate. The myth technology can deliver perfection is precisely that, a myth.

At the same time, those supporters who pay hard-earned cash to attend matches have seen some of the joy and spontaneity sucked out of the experience. Football with VAR is just that little less fun.

It should be scrapped. It won’t because, just like the NFL, football is increasingly a made for TV sport with multi-million pound broadcasting contracts which matter far more to those in power than the feelings of fans.

Ollie Westbury - Shrewsbury Town correspondent

Personally, I have always been a fan of VAR.

Maybe that is because the majority of the football I watch is in League One, and I do not have to deal with the frustrations of it week in and week out in the Premier League.

Some of the decisions that went against Shrewsbury Town last season would have been overturned if VAR was in place.

Having said that, when covering Wolves versus Bournemouth late on in the season, you witness the confusion in the ground.

Hwang Hee-Chan scored a perfectly good goal, only for VAR to find some obscure reason to rule it out. It could have been a foul, but the issue I had was no one in the stadium even saw it happen live, and there were no complaints from the Bournemouth players.

They say they do not want to re-referee the game - but at times that is exactly what they are doing.

Ultimately, football is for the fans, and they are the ones who are frustrated by its processes.

The only problem is, if you get rid of VAR, fans go back to lamenting officials for their mistakes instead. Either way, if you are a referee or linesman you cannot win.

I would keep it, but the idea of getting things 100 per cent correct when there is subjectivity and human error in play are not realistic.

Jonny Drury - Digital Sports Journalist

For me, I'm not sure whether scrapping VAR altogether is the right call, but in its current form it isn't working and it never was going to work.

When goal line technology came in, it was brilliant, it is black and white, there are no grey areas and decisions will be correct, although there has been one or two minor tech glitches.

But that works. So what else is back and white in football? There are two, whether there ball is in or out or the pitch, and it should be straightforward for offsides.

However, those rules have always been too confusing, and add VAR and drawing lines and including certain body parts to it, and it makes it even more head scratching.

That is as far as it goes. Everything else is subjective, with the main one being a tackle. One referee can deem it a foul, the other will say it is soft.

It was never going to work for that. People say technology works in other sports and that is true, because the rules are so clear.

But too much is subjective in football, so it was never going to work.

So for me, VAR doesn't need to go, it needs to be used for a small group of set things.

It was supposed to improve the game and lead to less controversy, but it has just caused more of it and that is the telling sign that shows you things need to change.

George Bennett - Walsall correspondent

I am an advocate for removing VAR from the game altogether.

It's been refreshing to cover Walsall in League Two on the basis that VAR has not been in operation. That doesn't mean that contentious decisions haven't been made and extensively debated, but once the dust has settled, each mistake can purely be put down to human error.

The same cannot be said for VAR officials, who have the luxury of reviewing an incident from multiple angles yet still sometimes fail to reach what many believe to be the correction decision.

The time in which it takes to reach certain decisions can also be frustrating, with a few exceeding even four to five minutes. That ultimately slows down the momentum of the contest and can often take away the instinctive excitement that football naturally brings.

While there are of course pros and cons to the technology, I firmly believe that football is better placed without VAR. How the Premier League will go about removing it with the technology spread across the footballing world is another issue altogether.

If it is to stay then I think it's also worth noting that the in-stadium experience requires improvement.

Nathan Judah - Digital Sports Editor

I would honestly vote for VAR to stay if it was implemented correctly.

But unfortunately that's not just going to happen overnight, over the next few months or indeed the next few years.

Use the technology for what it was brought in to do - ASSIST!

However, VAR is refereeing games, they're changing results and sucking the life out of the sport we love.

If the decisions were correct, it would be slightly easier to swallow - but the amount of errors coming out of Stokely Park is beyond a joke.

And we're now at the stage where even if the rules were changed for the better - I would not trust the individuals to carry out the process correctly - they're not fit for purpose!

Games are already being played for 95-99 minutes, VAR is taking matches to the 100 minute mark.

It's sucking all the life out of the game, destroying memorable moments and not allowing fans to celebrate.

It's creating a toxic atmosphere that has the capability to spill over into a dangerous incident should it continue in its present state.

It's too early for data collection, but the constant stop/start to the game has to be contributing to the plethora of increased injuries across the league.

We can argue back and forth, but the game is nothing without the fans.

In a recent poll I posted, 95% of 4,800 voters wanted to scrap VAR - that's good enough for me - GET RID!

Lewis Cox - West Brom correspondent

My opinion as a football lover is I would bin VAR.

Ask anybody - or the majority of people - who now suffer Premier League football regularly in-person, it has killed the sport from a supporter perspective.

Football is about emotion, passion, moments, memories. VAR doesn't work in that regard.

I am also wary, though, of the sport being seen to take a step backwards if it ditches the tiresome technology altogether.

Also, the likelihood of enough top-flight clubs voting to banish the thing is unlikely at best.

So what's the best outcome I hope for? To rid VAR decisions of any subjectivity. We have removed subjective decisions from one person on the pitch (and their assistants) to however many more at Stockley Park.

Black and white decisions that can be called by the technology - fine. Great, even.

But I do think everything else is badly strangling the game to within an inch of its life. Bring back the good old days of useless on-field refs. That'll do.