Without VAR, Arsenal finishes in the top four

VAR remains a controversial addition to football in general as the technology continues to deliver inconsistent decisions.

Almost every weekend, it delivers a new controversy in the Premier League.

Some teams have been fortunate to get the results to go their way, while others haven’t.

Arsenal has just finished the season 8th in the Premier League after an inconsistent set of performances from Mikel Arteta’s side.

However, the Gunners would have been in a better place if VAR decisions hadn’t affected their results it has been revealed.

Sun Sports created the Premier League table with match results of original referee decisions before VAR overturned them.

The table shows that Arsenal is the biggest sufferers of VAR’s decisions and they would have gotten four more points this season if not for the decisions.

Even more interestingly, Mikel Arteta’s men would have been in the top four, finishing above Chelsea, West Ham, Leicester City and Tottenham.

This shows that Arteta’s team is truly making progress and they probably need more luck to get back inside the top four.

Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United make up the rest of the top four in the table without VAR decisions.

An article from Ime

Tags VAR

16 Comments

      1. yeah be like saying , if corners were not allowed we would have …….lol
        well corners do exist!

  1. Is this counting all VAR decisions or only the ones that are generally considered “incorrect” by fans? Some were correct VAR calls and some were terrible decisions.

    If this is just referring to all overturned decisions then it’s a complete joke of an article as there we correctly overturned decisions.

    Do you know how else we could’ve gotten those 4 points?

    By not playing negative, slow football

    By not getting so many red cards

    By finishing our easy chances

    By chosing on form players to start

    Is our fan base so pathetic and desperate that it’s willing to go to these lengths to prove we are better than where we finished? League position is the most accurate metric, the end. Accept it

    1. I agree we probably ended up around where we should have based on how we’ve played (and agree the premise of the article is faulty). In terms of decisions I think we’ve had a few strange ones go against us (Luiz’ red card sticks out in my mind) but have also been “saved” by VAR overturning incorrect decisions against us. Probably fairly similar to most teams (although there was a period in the season that made me wonder)

      However, I do think Utd in particular have benefited from more than their share of decisions this season. Bit of a joke really – it was probably worth at least a position in the table.
      Leicester have benefitted from a few “soft” penalties as well. Vardy really milked it this year (his second penalty against spurs was ridiculous – so obvious he grabbed the defender and went down, but VAR just goes with it, as they seem to every time he goes down asking for a pen)

  2. I dont get the article, we use VAR in premier league football. The decisions were corrected and Arsenal lost out because the correct result was in the end given. Look at it another way, if there were no VAR, the other teams would have been given the wrong decisions, so Arsenal would have got results unfairly. We finished 8th and that is a true reflection on our poor season, please lets not try to justify something that isnt justifiable.

  3. This is pathetic. Either we are talking about finishing second since December or finishing top 4 without var. How does this show improvement? I expect us to talk about improvement on our style of play, our defense, our number of chances created, our league position and not all these rubbish stats.

    1. “This is pathetic. Either we are talking about finishing second since December or finishing top 4 without var!”i agree!👍

  4. What a demeaning article for our fanbase to be associated with.
    We finished 8th, without European football, knocked out in the 4th round of the fa cup and it’s all down to VAR?

    I’m amazed it wasn’t somehow spun to include AW and UE as part of the reason we failed so miserably this season.

    We are where we are, because that’s where we deserve to be – get over it, move on to the next chapter and stop trying to find excuses.

    1. ‘I’m amazed it wasn’t somehow spun to include AW and UE as part of the reason we failed so miserably this season.’.

      Don’t be amazed, but there are plenty of voices here attributing the failure of our current team to the ‘decade of decline under Wenger’, and that Arteta is doing a wonderful job of rescuing us from those dark days under Wenger, where 4th was looked down on, because ‘it is not a trophy’. The mind also boggles that these people would count the community shield as a trophy, yet would happily ignore the three real trophies won during the latter years of Wenger’s regime.

      1. Absolutely Nick – funny how finishing in the top four is now our out of reach top priority!!!

  5. Without Var we would have finished 4th !
    The header on the article .
    I would have said
    Without Arteta we would have finished 4th !
    would have been more appropriate ,we have always been hard done by by refs decisions since the PL started so with VAR it’s nothing new .
    There was no excuses finishing 8th with a team capable of getting top 4 ,next season will be very telling and there should be no excuses left we all know Arteta is one very lucky guy to still be in charge but as long as Stan is making money Arteta will always be a puppet for him

    1. Agree, maybe if Arteta had more about him and got out of this squad what it had in the first half, we wouldn’t be so far in the sh*t as we are. Using VAR as an excuse is really scrapping the barrel.

  6. The suggestion in the article is somewhat desperate or hope-inspiring – depending on who is reading. I do not like to soften reality. We were bad this season!

    Nonetheless, not so fast! VAR was really bad this season. I shall take the risk of suggesting that VAR can only work in a context of objectivity, combined with the appearance of objectivity. Not only should they be fair – but they should appear to be. This would mean changing the offside rules to eradicate the brilliant ‘measure until you get the desired result’. This means using a team that is completely independent or use AI (artificial intelligence).

    I was happy with the idea of VAR until a technician (Video editor) showed me that VAR is simply an extension of the same FA referees. He actually used one clip and made the person offside then onside by infinitesimal adjustments. I was shocked. I then listened to 2 referees explaining that VAR is subjective.

    Someone should not be offside by margins if a system allows manipulation by that same quality margin. In this context VAR can be as biased as the naked eye. I shall not call any cases but my technician friend showed me 7 cases that were glaring errors (or whatever). Incidentally, 2 affected us. So we did poorly – but VAR needs to be addressed.

  7. The simple truth is the EPL table doesn’t lie. We finished 8th which, if anything, probably flatters us. Pointless article!!

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