Premier League Chief Referee Mike Riley Makes Shocking Changes to VAR system

After falling under heavy criticism of the system last term, the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOL) are introducing alterations that will hopefully see fewer goals ruled out for marginal offside calls.

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Background. Video assistant referees (VAR) were introduced in the Premier League in 2019 to review “clear and obvious errors” in four game-changing incidents: goals, penalties, straight red cards and mistaken identity, whereby during that period, There were 125 penalties given last season, 92 in 2019-20, 103 in 2018-19 and 80 in 2017-18.

In the new Changes explained by the Premier League chief referee Mike Riley, the lines used to gauge such decisions are to be made thicker, which in this case will prove more beneficial to the attacking team.

There are also changes to the penalty interpretation after a record 125 spot-kicks were awarded in the division last season.

According to Riley, the move away from ‘forensic scrutiny’ will eradicate goals being ruled out when a player’s toe or nose was in an offside position and see around 20 goals more scored throughout the season.

“Fundamentally, we want the approach to be one that best allows the players to go out and express themselves, allows the Premier League games to flow and means the refereeing team, both as referee and as VAR, don’t intervene for the trivial offences,” said Riley, the general manager of PGMOL.

“Let’s create a free-flowing game, where the threshold is slightly higher than it was last season.

“On marginal offside, we’ve now effectively re-introduced the benefit of the doubt to the attacking player,” he explained. “Where we have a really close offside decision, we carry on following the same process that we did last season with the one-pixel lines; we’ll then put on the thicker broadcast lines and, where they overlap, those situations will now be deemed as onside.

“What we give back to the game is 20 goals that we would have disallowed last season by using quite forensic scrutiny. So it’s the toenails, the noses of the players who are offside; they might have been offside last season but, next season, they won’t be.”

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Contact now should prove insufficient in itself when awarding penalties for tangles inside the area and the use of VAR in the European Championship is being heralded as ensuring there is less intervention to enable the game to maintain its flow.

“The principles we established are the referee should look for contact and establish clear contact, then ask if that contact has a consequence, and then has the player used that contact to try to win a foul or win a penalty,” Riley said. “It’s not sufficient to say ‘yes there’s contact.’

“I think partly we got into that frame of mind by the forensic analysis that went on in the VAR world. Contact on its own is only part of what the referee should look for. Consider consequence and the motivation of the player as well.

Riley says that as the season nears the board will take the positives from the Euros. “Raising the threshold is a good thing, as is making sure the VAR only intervenes where we’ve got clear and obvious evidence. It’s not going to be same experience but those principles and advantages we can harness for the benefit of Premier League football.”