VAR is coming to the Premier League - but its under-pressure referees will still be learning on the job

Yet after another weekend of VAR controversy, and as the referees and assistants left their regular two-day meeting on Wednesday, this month at Loughborough University, there remains considerable doubt over just how ready they are for the Premier League launch of VAR.

It has been used live in just 66 games so far over two seasons with now just the FA Cup semi-finals and final left. There are 17 select group referees and some are understood to have been involved in around just two or three VAR games. PGMOL will not give out individual figures than to say that all the current select group have been both on-field referees in a VAR game or the VAR itself at least once. PGMOL adds that all its officials are now Ifab-qualified as VARs although what that means, we are yet to find out.

It is not PGMOL’s fault that they have had precious little time to organise the training of their officials for the biggest single change to the game in a generation while also refereeing of the Premier League season for the previous two years. They have done their best with the offline training, which has chiefly involved asking referees who are scheduled to be refereeing in or near London on a Sunday to travel a day earlier and have an afternoon practising their VAR skills.

In the cup competitions the FA and the Football League has restricted VAR almost entirely to Premier League grounds although not exclusively. Largely unnoticed in the outcry at the absence of VAR, and the consequences of that, at the FA Cup quarter-final at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday – because it was at a Championship club - VAR was used at the Riverside Stadium for Middlesbrough’s Carabao Cup quarter-final against Burton Albion in December.

The reality is dawning, however, that there will be mistakes. PGMOL says that its referees and assistants have had more training than any other league that has adopted VAR, which is chiefly a result of the delay that was voted for by Premier League clubs last season. The view from within is that with another year of practising offline and trialling VAR in cup competitions, the select group would be truly ready for its introduction. There are expected to be as many as 18 Premier League games scheduled next season on a Friday night, which will at least alleviate pressure on numbers.

VAR is coming next season, ready or not. One only needed to see the error made by Paul Tierney in giving Raheem Sterling’s offside goal against Watford that if an official is not sure of the laws – he seemed to believe erroneously that Daryl Janmaat’s touch meant it was onside – then no amount of replays can save the situation.

There is an argument that VAR should come in for the first season on only issues of fact. For instance, offside decisions, or whether a foul is inside or outside the area, or for mistaken identity. In that respect Sergio Aguero’s header against Swansea City would have been easily ruled out, and Jurgen Locadia’s goal for Brighton against Millwall would have stood. Once VAR is involved in red cards, such as Victor Lindelof’s revised sending off at Molineux, then the project is being asked to make very subjective decisions in its infancy.

The frustration is also that VAR is not there to make all decisions correct, it is only there to rectify “clear and obvious errors” – a gaping hole in the protocol written by David Elleray. Mike Riley, the managing director of PGMOL, is resisting the Ifab protocol that the on-field referee must review decisions on the pitch-side screen. Martin Atkinson did not do so on Saturday night when he downgraded Lindelof’s red card to yellow, instead taking the word of his VAR, Chris Kavanagh.

That is the preference of most select group referees who feel that they benefit from not facing the pressure of consulting a pitchside screen, nor lose as much time doing so. The Australian referee Jarred Gillett consented to have his conversations with players and assistants broadcast for his final A-League game, and at one point he tells his assistants that he will go to the screen on a VAR review “to sell” his decision. “The players are expecting it,” he adds. Should Gillett be assigned a Premier League game next season, when he joins PGMOL’s select group two as the country’s first foreign referee, he will not have to sell any VAR decisions that way.

Gillett will be the PGMOL referee most experienced in VAR. The rest of them have done their best on the few occasions they have had the chance as well as those dummy runs under the hub commander, but they will be very much learning on the job.