When asked at the beginning of this week of destiny for English football who would win the Premier League, this was the instinctive answer: VAR.
As the crass, results-bending misjudgments kept piling up in that dark cubby-hole secreted in a business park miles distant from the real action, another notion took hold: that if Arsenal were to lurch over the line, a huge asterisk should appear beside their name in the hallowed records of the game.
Because rarely, if ever, in the history of the country which gave football to the world, have its champions been given so much unseemly outside help.
VAR (Video Assistant Referee) should be retitled WAR – Wrongfully Assisting Referees. The battle for how the powers of this monstrosity should be curtailed has to begin right now.
Or else the very credibility of football here – and over the border in Scotland for that matter – will be wounded beyond repair.
Had we not been brought up on our simple trust in the honesty and integrity of our football we might have been questioning whether the fix had gone in.
Arsenal’s Gabriel was not sent off for a headbutt against Man City and therefore spared a ban
The disallowing of that late West Ham equaliser at the London Stadium this month was ironic
Earlier this season both Everton and Brighton were denied blatant penalties against Arsenal which would have cost north London’s current finest critical points. Reflection on those incidents has arisen by hindsight as more dubious decisions have raised serious controversy.
Come the key fixture in the climax to the chase Gabriel, Arsenal’s beefiest enforcer-in-chief, was not sent off for a headbutt against Manchester City. Although Mikel Arteta’s muscular ensemble were defeated in that match they were spared, crucially, the loss of Gabriel for two vital ensuing games by VAR’s bizarre approval of the withholding of a red card.
Then the biggest call of all. The disallowing of that late West Ham equaliser which would have sent City into the final week in pole position to add the league title to their Carabao and FA Cup trophies. The reason given was that Arsenal’s goalkeeper had been impeded.
Oh the irony! They’ve been gunning down goalkeepers all season long. As well as platoons of opponents in goalmouths as they launch their barrages of corners. As they did in this instance at the other end of the pitch. According to VAR, all of those assaults came after the selective decision which pushed West Ham even more heavily towards relegation.
Really? And mind that the convicted culprit was shoved into David Raya by one of the keeper’s Arsenal team-mates.
Oh the hypocrisy! Arteta feverishly brandishing an accusing arm in the air as any number of bodies from both teams were hitting the deck in the box.
Nor was that the end of it. On Monday night at the Emirates, with Arsenal clinging with embarrassing desperation to a one-nil win against poor old relegated Burnley, their goalscorer Kai Havertz was inconceivably allowed to stay on the pitch after a potentially leg-breaking foul. Again no VAR red. Are these guys colour-blind?
No wonder conspiracy theories about the football establishment favouring big clubs are running rife. Even more so the other side of Hadrian’s defensive Wall following Hearts being broken in the match which preceded their encounter with Celtic hooligans, by the awarding of a penalty to Martin O’Neill’s green tribe for a supposed Motherwell handling of a ball quite clearly headed away.
Which effectively thwarted the wresting of the title from Scottish football’s Glasgow powerhouse for the first time since Alex Ferguson led Aberdeen to glory a third time 41 years ago.
Kai Havertz was inconceivably not given a red card for a potential leg-breaking tackle
It will be dereliction of duty by the FA and Premier League if they fail to declare that wrestling, body blocking, back-shoving, shirt and sleeve tugging and downright thuggery are fouls
Did someone along a shadowy corridor decide it was high time Arsenal won the League again after two barren decades? Surely not. Heaven forbid. Perish the thought. Not these days. It’s 62 years, for goodness sake, since England players Tony Kay and Bronco Layne were sent to prison for fixing Sheffield Wednesday matches in a betting scandal which also embroiled some 30 more footballers.
Arsenal have only themselves to blame for the asterisk tainting of their title, for inflicting an ugly face on much of the Premier League.
They were the best team earlier in this campaign. Playing some delightful, adventurous football with a focussed sense of purpose. But with the spectre of City coming up behind them yet again – like Lester Piggott on the rails at Epsom – they went into full frontal physical attack mode. Bruising their way to the corner flags and from there turning goalmouths into Ultimate Fighting Cages. All driven on by manic Mikel and his unchained set-piece hit man in his paranoid fear of coming second yet again.
This is not some festering hatred of Arsenal. Not carping, even. When I dared to declare in these pages recently that the title would be claimed by either the ugliest team in the Premier League – Arsenal – or the most boring – Manchester City – the outrage was inevitable. Even though I concluded by expressing a preference for Arsenal to prevail because of my long-standing friendship with such Highbury legends as George Graham.
Pep Guardiola almost shifted my dial by updating his tippy-tappy strategy to something more akin to Luis Enrique’s formula at Paris Saint-Germain, where through penetrating angles his side seize any glimpse of a chance to break out of keep-ball. That acceleration came too late to undo the harm done earlier in the season by the wastage of points on the belief that even slow-motion possession was ten-tenths of the law.
By the time it came to Bournemouth on Tuesday, Pep’s long goodbye had been doused by the additional fatigue of winning a tough FA Cup final.
A problem compounded by more outside interference, the Premier League refusing to let City ease their congested fixture list by a juggling with dates.
Even so, the overall reality of the Premier League season was that apart from the Emirates and Etihad faithful, fewer and fewer football followers wanted to watch the WWE coming to penalty areas near you, nor goalkeepers standing with foot on ball for minutes on end.
As for VAR, its days are numbered. Unless its powers are strictly limited. Basically to balls crossing lines. And only to offside if the guidelines refer to a body-width of advantage. Nobody wants to watch great goals being chalked off by a fingernail.
Referees have always been the whipping boys but it is time to give them back control of matches. History reminds us that pre-VAR there was a general consensus that mistakes generally evened themselves out for all teams over the season. That was infinitely preferable to the official apologies for blunders belatedly offered now, which do nothing to soften grievance nor balance the scales of justice.
Better still, give the referees some proper help. It will be dereliction of duty by the Football Association and the Premier League if they fail to declare that wrestling, body blocking, back-shoving, shirt and sleeve tugging and downright thuggery are fouls. Any two of which amount to a red card.
Everton and Brighton were denied blatant penalties against Arsenal in the Premier League
As for VAR, its days are numbered. Unless its powers are strictly limited
Only then will we see an end to Armageddon in the box. And a return to football as we know and love it. A game of skill, imagination, intelligence, invention and, yes, laced with courage. If that happens then it will be just as well the entire Arsenal family went into rhapsody all Tuesday night long.
The premise on which Arteta put an end to their Premier League drought will be disqualified. The concept of them going on to dominate the English game following the end of the Guardiola era will be deeply challenged.
As will their leader when he strives to adapt and to extend his hyper-charged motivation of players yet further beyond the usual five-year span of most managers at one club.
For starters, manic Mikel is unlikely to find UEFA’s chosen officials for the Champions League final against Luis Enrique’s PSG on Saturday week as Arsenal-friendly as the VAR-men tucked away in Stockley Park.
