VAR Assignment Concentration Crisis: there is something very wrong here

 

 

This article uses data from Untold Referees which applies rigorous analyses of which referees are handling which matches

Untold Arsenal, and our companions at https://www.untold-referee.com/ have noted a real problem with VAR assignments leading up to Matchweek 18.  A problem that is not hard to spot, but which is totally ignored by other commentators.

Basically, the same clubs are getting the same VAR officials over and over again.   This in itself does not prove that there is corruption in the system, but it strongly suggests that if there is something amiss in the way referees look after VAR then certain clubs are benefitting from it over and over again.

Let’s make it really clear.  If you are running VAR, you need to make sure that your VAR officials are neutral and reliable.   One way to do this is to give them the best possible training – and on that we can make no comment because the training they get is utterly secretive.

The second is to make sure that you have enough VAR officials so that each club only has at most two matches overseen by the same VAR official – once at home and once away.

That is logical and easy to achieve.   After all, we are not talking about the Northern Premier League Midlands Division here (and if you think I am making that up, I am not – it is part of tier eight of the football pyramid.  We are in fact talking about Tier 1 – the Premier League – considered by some to be the top league in the world.  Although having read our reports on the way in which they arrange refereeing, I think some commentators are starting to reconsider that reputation. 

What our friends at Untold Referees.com have done is to analyse and review VAR assignment patterns up to match week 18 – something that is never mentioned ever by the media.

Of course, those of us in the UK know how much VAR is mentioned on TV commentaries, and yet those commentators have never once revealed concentration levels of VAR referees – levels that exceed even main referee patterns, creating a parallel crisis in officiating distribution. 

Let’s put it clearly – referees and VARs are rotated so that any unconscious bias is limited in its application.  If a referee or VAR only sees a club against whom he is biased twice in a season, his ability to affect results is reduced.

The only reason for not having such a rotational system is that one believes one’s referees are so perfect that such rotation is not needed.  But we have repeatedly shown on this site that the performance of different referees is truly varied.

And yet in such circumstances, Craig Pawson has been VAR for Chelsea five times —representing 278% of expected placements.  Such a figure leads to the projection that he will be Chelsea’s VAR over ten times, rather than seeing them twice as a VAR, which is the mathematical ideal.

And this isn’t an isolated anomaly:  Pawson also has four encounters with Leeds United, while  Paul Tierney has served as VAR for Liverpool four times, Peter Bankes for Aston Villa four times, Stuart Attwell for Everton four times, and  Andy Madley for Tottenham four times. When the same VAR official reaches four to five times the number of games he should be seeing involving a specific club, by the season’s midpoint, the assignment system has demonstrably failed its basic fairness mandate.

But there is more – this data is there and available for anyone with a computer, a pen and paper.   Anyone can check these figures and see how outrageous they are.   And yet PGMO just carry on, seemingly not caring a toss.  And it doesn’t matter if PGMO say they have never seen any sign of a problem.  That is like a driver doing 95mph on the motorway saying it’s ok because he’s never had an accident.  It is still wrong.

In fact, the structural problem is even worse than the main referee crisis, because VAR-qualified officials are drawn from a smaller pool, working multiple matches per weekend, yet PGMOL applies no visible rotation strategy. 

John Brooks has 3× concentrations with five different clubs  (Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester United, Newcastle, Sunderland), demonstrating how a limited official pool creates mathematical impossibilities for fair distribution.  Stuart Attwell has accumulated four separate 3× patterns  (Arsenal, Fulham, Newcastle, Tottenham), accounting for 44% of his VAR assignments from just four clubs. These aren’t random clustering—they’re the predictable outcome of assigning from a constrained pool without rotation protocols.

The VAR concentration crisis compounds main referee patterns: when the same official appears in multiple roles across a club’s matches, total influence becomes impossible to measure through assignment counts alone.

In short, a club facing the same person as the main referee twice, VAR twice, and 4th official once, has experienced that individual’s decision-making authority five times—equivalent to seeing the main referee five times – something that should trigger immediate intervention.

Yet PGMOL treats these roles as independent, when they demonstrably are not, allowing cumulative influence to escape accountability frameworks designed for single-role analysis.

Everything is dependent upon the assumption that no referee has any bias against any of the teams he sees.   And maybe that is true – but that is still just “maybe”.  The Premier League is the richest league in the world and doesn’t have to take such risks – it can afford to have more referees and more VARs and spread them around a bit more.

Thus, two questions arise.  One is why does PGMOL run things this way, and the other is why has the media refused to comment?