On Thursday, Premier League clubs will vote on Wolves’ proposal to scrap video assistant referees. The motion will almost certainly not achieve majority support, never mind secure the 14 votes out of 20 needed for it to pass. But what it may do is to shift the Overton window and lead to a serious review of VAR, an assessment of where it works and where it doesn’t. And that is something that is long overdue.
Consultation is unfashionable in the modern world. Politicians of all stripes act too often in effect by fiat, and that is as true in football as anything else. VAR was imposed for the 2018 World Cup with minimal research or conversation and accepted almost everywhere without anybody really investigating the consequences.
