Is VAR modern football’s most clear and obvious error?

Sky Sports News did their usual Monday morning thing today, summoning former ref Dermot Gallagher to forensically examine the more contentious refereeing decisions from the weekend’s Premier League action in the company of a couple of former pros, who’ve probably seen them given, Clive. They had no shortage of material to work with, what with the curtain-twitchers in the Stockley Park VAR bunker having spent the weekend conveying the impression somebody had spiked the tea urn with a couple of bottles of hooch and a few handfuls of mind-altering mushrooms, all the better to help them keep the football-watching public entertained, outraged or amused, depending on their affiliations.

Watching Gallagher and chums bang various referees and their VARs to rights, The Fiver couldn’t help but yearn for the days when everything was simpler. Halcyon days when players were offside if the flag went up and onside if it didn’t. Assistant referees didn’t always get things right, because being an assistant referee is extremely difficult. But at least it didn’t take them almost five minutes to reach a decision.

Nowadays, advances in technology mean we get to wait that long for a collection of jobsworths to fiddle around with their set squares and rulers, desperately trying to find some – nay, any! – way they can to ignore the spirit of the law and find some barely discernible technicality to chalk off the kind of sweet strike most players will never score in a lifetime.

Originally brought in to clear up clear and obvious errors, the irony of VAR’s introduction being a clear and obvious error has been lost on very few. But the fact of the matter is that there was a widespread clamour for its introduction from the no end of footballers,