Wolverhampton Wanderers moved to shake things up in the Premier League this week by proposing the league scrap VAR.
A couple of hours after that news broke, Newcastle United were on the end of a poor VAR review that cost them a penalty that would potentially have changed the entire outlook of the game.
While reports suggest that most clubs will vote to keep VAR, the Premier League are set to offer up an alternative called Football Video Support (FVS) according to a report in The Telegraph.
The new system is similar to the one used in Tennis and Cricket already and would involve each manager starting the game with two VAR/FVS reviews that they can call on at any time.
Like with VAR, the FVS can only review certain incidents, those being goals, penalty decisions, red cards and cases of mistaken identity.
If a manager feels an incident should be reviewed, the on-field referee will go to a pitch-side monitor to review the incident rather than having a room of people at Stockley Park going over and over it.
Should the referee stick with his original decision, that manager loses a review challenge, but should the incident be overturned, that manager keeps that challenge to be used again. Players can signal to the manager that they want a review, but only the manager can make that call to halt the game by signalling to the referee and conferring with the fourth official as to what the challenge is for.
The new system has already been trialled during this month’s Blue Stars/Fifa Youth Cup in Zurich and has been very positively received.
It's not a guarantee that the Premier League will adopt the new system, but it does sound better than VAR already as the game will flow more if there are fewer reviews and on-field decisions are allowed to stand more often.
Meanwhile, Newcastle United co-owner Jamie Reuben has had his own say on how to overhaul VAR in a reply to Piers Morgan on X.
"We should introduce a 60 second rule. Officials are allowed to watch it in real time for up to 60 seconds - if they cannot make a decision by then it means it’s not a clear and obvious mistake and the on field decision should stand."
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Liverpool
|
12 | 16 | 31 |
2 |
Manchester City
|
12 | 5 | 23 |
3 |
Chelsea
|
12 | 9 | 22 |
4 |
Arsenal
|
12 | 9 | 22 |
5 |
Brighton
|
12 | 5 | 22 |
6 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
12 | 14 | 19 |
7 |
Nottingham Forest
|
12 | 2 | 19 |
8 |
Aston Villa
|
12 | 0 | 19 |
9 |
Fulham
|
12 | 0 | 18 |
10 |
Newcastle United
|
12 | 0 | 18 |
11 |
Brentford
|
12 | 0 | 17 |
12 |
Manchester United
|
12 | 0 | 16 |
13 |
Bournemouth
|
12 | -1 | 15 |
14 |
West Ham United
|
12 | -4 | 15 |
15 |
Everton
|
12 | -7 | 11 |
16 |
Leicester
|
12 | -8 | 10 |
17 |
Wolves
|
12 | -8 | 9 |
18 |
Ipswich
|
12 | -10 | 9 |
19 |
Crystal Palace
|
12 | -7 | 8 |
20 |
Southampton
|
12 | -15 | 4 |