Five Matchweeks, Two Admitted Errors and a Counterfactual Table: Is VAR Being Wrongly Convicted?

FotMob published a table. Not the real table running on the pitch. A counterfactual table, reconstructing the Premier League as if VAR had never existed. People shared it across forums. They attached a headline to it: Arsenal would not be where they are without VAR. They believed it immediately. They were outraged immediately. And most of them never opened the table to count a single row, a single point.

I opened it. I counted. How many points were actually overturned in total? Almost nothing.

This is not an answer meant to defend VAR. I have no reason to defend a system that operates through internal calls, dark rooms, and minutes that nobody is allowed to read. But in a profession where every figure must be cross-checked against two independent sources, I have a hard habit to break: when someone shouts loudly, I go look for the data standing behind the shout. This time, the data behind the shout is very small.

The VAR controversy in the Premier League this season is not new. It runs in cycles. A few times each season, an error is publicly admitted, a wave of outrage rises, a few managers go on television, a few former stars call for the technology to be scrapped. Then everything settles. Then it rises again. What is different this season is the speed. After only five matchweeks, the refereeing body has already had to admit two serious errors. One in the Manchester derby. One in a match involving Sunderland. Two errors in five matchweeks is an abnormal frequency.

The first error. Erling Haaland's goal in the Manchester derby was allowed to stand, but the refereeing body later admitted it was a VAR mistake. The second. A penalty awarded to Sunderland was admitted to have been wrongly given. But here is the truly notable point. In the statement about the Sunderland penalty, the refereeing body said it was wrongly awarded while not being a clear and obvious error.

Read that sentence again.

Wrongly awarded, yet not a clear and obvious error. This is no longer a story about a wrong decision. This is a story about the very threshold used to justify VAR's existence. If a wrong penalty is not clear enough for VAR to intervene, then what is VAR for? And if it is clear enough, why was there no intervention? That question has no tidy answer. And precisely because it has no tidy answer, people turn to a tidier one: scrap it.

Wayne Rooney publicly called for abolition. A significant share of fans cheered the idea. In fact, there is a detail easily overlooked in the refereeing body's statement: the error came not only from the technology, but from the small number of screens and the insufficient support staff on VAR duty.

Michael Carrick said he was worried. Not worried about the derby result. Worried about how the system is operated. Too many screens, too few people. He was right. And that is a far more constructive reading than shouting to abolish a technology that is not, in itself, at fault.

But the real story is not there. The real story is in the numbers.

I opened FotMob's counterfactual table. I compared it with the real table. This is a boring exercise. There is no explosive moment. Only rows of figures differing by one or two units.

Manchester City. Fifteen points in reality. Eleven without VAR. A four-point gap. This is the largest swing in the entire league. Four points after five matchweeks.

Arsenal. Twelve points in reality. Still twelve without VAR. Still top of the table. Read the headline attached to the table again: Arsenal would not be where they are without VAR. But Arsenal top both tables. The headline was written against the very data being published.

Coventry. Three points in reality, one without VAR. A two-point gap. But they remain bottom in both versions.

That is the entire range. From zero to four points. For the other eighteen clubs, most move between zero and two places, and between zero and two points. If you place the real table and the counterfactual table side by side, ninety percent of the content is identical.

This is the point I want to emphasise, and I will say it plainly because it matters more than the VAR story itself: the margin of change is too small to justify the frequency and intensity of the controversy now unfolding. A swing of a few points in a five-matchweek sample is the kind of margin anyone who has done sports statistics knows well: it is noise, not a trend.

I am not writing to defend VAR. I am writing to say that we are witnessing a familiar phenomenon in the football industry: a small statistical effect amplified into a demand for major reform. The effect is real. But the magnitude is small. And the gap between those two numbers is exactly where traffic is generated.

If you want to understand why a no-VAR table format exists, the answer is simple. It invites fans to look up their own club. It generates clicks. It is a data-entertainment product, not an analytical tool. Data providers do not sell truth. They sell curiosity. And curiosity, especially when packaged as emotion against a hated system, sells very well.

I work with transfer data and cash flows. I am used to seeing how far a figure on a financial statement can be bent to serve a story. It is the same here. The no-VAR table is technically a real table. But the headline attached to it is not. And in this industry, the headline is what travels farthest.

Now let us ask the reverse question. If the data does not support the outrage, does that make the outrage wrong?

No. This is the hard part of the problem.

Two admitted errors in five matchweeks are not a small matter. A decisive derby goal allowed when it should not have been. A penalty wrongly awarded. If you are a fan of the affected club, the question of the league's overall margin does not matter. The only question that matters is: was my club robbed of something? And the answer is yes.

A wrong penalty is not evenly distributed. It is not divided among twenty clubs. It falls entirely on one match, one team, one night. Manchester United are right to feel wronged in the derby. That is a real injustice, even if it does not move their position very much.

And here is a detail I must acknowledge, because it shows the original article is not entirely partisan. It does not let Tottenham hide behind VAR. Spurs have only two points after five matchweeks, and the piece states clearly: VAR cannot be blamed for Tottenham's form. That is a sentence I respect, because it assigns responsibility correctly. With Roberto De Zerbi, there is no shadow to hide in. Two points is two points, regardless of technology.

In another corner, Chelsea under Xabi Alonso are described through their defensive mishaps. That is not a VAR error. That is an organisational error. And if we speak of teams affected unevenly by VAR, Crystal Palace under Pierre Sage, Fulham under Arbeloa and Nottingham Forest under Glasner all sit in the group said to have received no help from the technology. While Coventry, Ipswich and Brighton are said to have benefited.

That is a tidy division. Too tidy. A club here, a storyline there, each playing a role in a ready-made drama. When a story is arranged so that every club has its own VAR subplot, I begin to suspect the teller's motives. This is how content is structured to maximise emotional reach, not to find the truth.

And there is another contradiction worth recording. Aston Villa are said to have turned a corner after a 3-2 win over Tottenham. Yet they sit eighteenth with four points. A team that just turned a corner sits eighteenth. This detail speaks for itself about the internal consistency of the source data. Not every figure you read has been checked.

This is something I learned in Russia, investigating player age-fraud cases. You can alter a figure on paper. You can buy a birth year. But you cannot buy a career. Data is only trustworthy when it survives being challenged. And this no-VAR table has not been fully challenged.

An empty stadium, and the sound of money is heard clearest on every collision. But here, the loudest sound is not money. It is the sound of headlines running faster than data.

So what is truly at stake?

Not the table. The table barely changes. What is at stake is VAR's legitimacy as a system. And that is the more serious risk. A contested wrong decision is dangerous. A wrong decision admitted by the very body that made it is far more dangerous. Because it does not only weaken trust in one match. It weakens trust in the whole process.

The industry's operational chain transmits the problem in a straight line. Upstream is the integrity of the refereeing apparatus, with its admitted errors. Midstream is the credibility of the league, with results placed under question. Downstream is broadcast revenue, fan debate, and the derivative markets that depend on the certainty of outcomes.

A result that can be revised after the match is a result no longer absolutely trustworthy. For the betting market, that means the uncertainty of outcome data rises. For the media, it means one more topic to exploit. And a topic about controversy is always a better topic than a topic about stability.

That is the paradox of this story. VAR's instability has value for the media. The media reports on that instability. The instability continues. Nobody has an incentive to calm it. At least, nobody has a commercial incentive.

Now back to the sample problem. Five matchweeks. This is a number I cannot overlook, because it is below any threshold for a serious analyst to conclude anything. When you speak of a relegation battle at matchweek five, you are not speaking of a battle. You are speaking of the randomness of a small sample.

Coventry, Tottenham, Aston Villa and Fulham sit within a two-point band. With two points, the order among these teams can be reversed by a single match. Drawing relegation conclusions from this data is like reading the weather from one temperature reading. It could be right. But it cannot be trusted.

And there is another signal suggesting we are looking at a picture that may not correspond to verifiable reality. The simultaneous presence of Coventry, Hull, Leeds, Sunderland and Ipswich among the top twenty. Such a structure differs notably from the Premier League we know. This does not necessarily mean the data is wrong. But it does mean the data needs independent verification before being used for anything serious.

Every football contract buries a piece of truth left untold. So does a table. Under every row of points is a story left behind. Who scored. Who erred. Who benefited and who never knew. The table does not say those things. It only says the points.

So if I summarise what the data is truly saying, this is what I see.

First, VAR's effect on the table after five matchweeks ranges from zero to four points, and in most cases from zero to two points. This is a noise level, not a trend.

Second, VAR's legitimacy is under real pressure, and that pressure comes from two admitted errors, not from the table changing.

Third, the original article's headline runs against its own data. Arsenal top both tables. This is a contradiction that cannot be argued away by interpretation.

And fourth, the operational problem Carrick pointed out — too many screens, too few people — is the most reasonable starting point for genuine reform. Not abolishing the technology. But improving the people behind it.

As an observer, I do not expect a quick fix. In the short term, the refereeing body will continue to apologise publicly and clarify its process.

In the central scenario, no structural change occurs. Everything settles. The season continues. And next season, another error explodes in turn.

But if there is an optimistic scenario, it lies here. The admitted errors could lead to a rule clarification, especially at the clear-and-obvious-error threshold, and in disputed situations such as a player interfering with play from an offside position. That is how a system repairs itself. Not by disappearing, but by surviving scrutiny.

I write about the cash flows running beneath football. But sometimes the flow is not money. It is trust. Trust is also a form of capital. And it can also be withdrawn.

Two errors in five matchweeks are not proof of a collapsing system. But they are proof of a system losing its reserve of trust. If VAR is to survive long term, it does not need to be perfect. It needs to be operated by enough people, in front of enough screens, with an accountability mechanism fans can follow.

One person at a time. One point at a time.

As for that no-VAR table, I keep it in my database. Not as evidence. As a reminder. That every time a headline shouts, I still have to open the table and count.