Howard Webb is to appoint a team of new coaches and VAR specialists to help improve standards further, with the frequency of errors markedly reduced since he came in as the Premier League‘s chief refereeing officer.
Stats collated by the five-man Independent Key Match Incidents Panel — made up of three former players and one representative appointed by the Premier League and PGMOL, the body which controls refereeing in England — show that the total number of VAR-related errors dropped from 18 in the first part of the season to 12.
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Incorrect interventions — when the VAR has erred in telling the referee he has made a mistake — have dropped by a third, to one every 37.5 games from one every 24.3 games.
The number of missed interventions — when the VAR should have stepped in but didn’t — have almost halved from 12 to 7, to one every 21.4 games rather than one every 12.2 games.
The panel reported:
83 correct interventions during 2022-23 season so far
33.3% fewer incorrect interventions, in more games, since the return after the World Cup — 4, compared to 6 pre-World Cup
Missed interventions down from 12 to 7
All key match incidents are assessed on a week-to-week basis by the panel, but stats alone only tell part of the story. Players, coaches and fans are often left frustrated by a perceived lack of decision-making.
Webb believes that good officiating starts on field, and wants to reduce the number of errors as much as possible with subjective decisions. However, Webb will have to balance admitting mistakes with managing expectations.
Earlier this month, Brighton & Hove Albion felt they had been on the wrong end of five VAR decisions in their 2-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur; ESPN sources have said that the panel concluded only one was incorrect in the VAR hub.
Webb conceded after the game that Karou Mitoma should have been awarded a spot kick after he was tripped by Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg but the VAR, Michael Salisbury, took no action.
