I’m not in the camp that wants VAR binned completely, but I can’t pretend I’m happy with it “in its entirety” either. That’s why it’s a no from me. The tech isn’t the villain, it’s the mission creep. Too often it feels like we’ve moved from correcting obvious howlers to re-refereeing the match from a screen.
Football’s rules, for all the modern add-ons, still hinge on one basic idea: the referee on the pitch is the final arbiter. He’s human. He’ll miss things. He’ll get some things wrong. That’s always been part of the game, and we can live with it as long as there’s a consistent standard and the match doesn’t become a courtroom drama every weekend.
Keep it for the black-and-white calls
Where VAR actually earns its keep is the simple yes or no stuff. Was the ball out? Was it offside? Did it cross the line? Those decisions are measurable. They’re not about “feel” or interpretation, they’re about fact. That’s the kind of support that helps officials without undermining them.
What I don’t like is VAR stepping in because the video official thinks there was a foul and the ref didn’t. That’s where the trouble starts, because contact in football isn’t a maths problem. Two folk can watch the same clip and come away with different conclusions, and half the time that’s because the laws themselves leave plenty of room for interpretation.
The Trusty red card shows the grey area
The Trusty red card at the weekend is a good example of why this gets messy. You can argue it either way, and plenty did. I’d say it was a sending-off offence, but I’m not going to pretend there’s a single “fully correct” answer when even ex-referees turned pundits are split on it.
That’s exactly the point. If a decision is so borderline that it becomes a debate show topic, then it’s not the sort of thing VAR should be barging into unless the referee has clearly missed something blatant.
“Clear and obvious” shouldn’t take minutes
We were sold VAR on the idea it would fix clear and obvious errors. So let’s actually hold it to that. If the VAR can’t make a call inside 20 seconds, then by definition it’s neither clear nor obvious. It’s subjective, it’s arguable, and it’s probably best left with the on-field decision.
Strip it back, set a tight time limit, and stop using it to hunt for reasons to change big calls. Rangers, and everyone else in the SPFL, needs consistency more than anything. Without that, VAR just becomes another weekly argument.
A simple tweak that would help
One practical way to make VAR less intrusive is to narrow the intervention threshold: only step in for factual errors or genuinely obvious misses, and otherwise back the ref. It wouldn’t end controversy, but it would cut down the endless slow-motion “forensic” reviews that make the game feel stopped more than played.
Related Articles
About Rangers News Views
Rangers News Views offers daily Glasgow Rangers coverage including match reaction, transfer analysis, SPFL context, tactical breakdowns and opinion-led articles written by supporters for supporters.
