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A table showing how the Premier League table would have looked if the on-field decisions in every game had been allowed to stand without intervention from VAR makes for interesting reading.
Manchester World crunched the numbers for the season as a whole, publishing the league positions and points that would have been accumulated by each side if video technology had not been in effect.
What’s striking is how little difference it actually makes to the composition of the final league table. 12 teams do not move at all, including all of the top eight, while only two sides (Fulham and Wolves) move by more than a single place. All three relegated sides remain the same, too.
How the Premier League table would have looked without VAR
- Manchester City: 94 points (actual position: 1st, 91 points)
- Arsenal: 86 points (actual position: 2nd, 89 points)
- Liverpool: 79 points (actual position: 3rd, 82 points)
- Aston Villa: 75 points (actual position: 4th, 68 points)
- Tottenham Hotspur: 66 points (actual position: 5th, 66 points)
- Chelsea: 63 points (actual position: 6th, 63 points)
- Newcastle United: 60 points (actual position: 7th, 60 points)
- Manchester United: 58 points (actual position: 8th, 60 points)
- Fulham: 52 points (actual position: 13th, 47 points)
- West Ham United: 49 points (actual position: 9th, 52 points)
- Crystal Palace: 47 points (actual position: 10th, 49 points)
- Brighton and Hove Albion: 47 points (actual position: 11th, 48 points)
- Bournemouth: 47 points (actual position: 12th, 48 points)
- Everton: 44 points after eight point deduction (actual position: 15th, 40 points)
- Brentford: 41 points (actual position: 16th, 39 points)
- Wolverhampton Wanderers: 40 points (actual position: 14th, 46 points)
- Nottingham Forest: 36 points after 4 point deduction (actual position: 17th, 32 points)
- Burnley: 26 points (actual position: 19th, 24 points)
- Luton Town: 25 points (actual position: 18th, 26 points)
- Sheffield United: 15 points (actual position: 20th, 16 points)
VAR made no meaningful difference to 2023/24 Premier League table
There is an argument to be made that there’s a bit of luck about that fact: four clubs would have been at least four points better or worse off if VAR were not in use, and there is a bit of happenstance that this time around it did not adversely affect the league league positions that have actual consequences on the league title, European spots or relegation places.
But a correlation analysis nonetheless shows a 98.8% match between the real points tallies and the no-VAR totals, which is extremely strong.
We’d also point out that the data appears to have paid no heed to the VAR decisions that were in fact incorrect and what the impact on results would have been if they had actually been made correctly.
Nor can it possibly capture the effect that red card decisions, one way or the other, could have had on results – or indeed the different ways games might have played out if goals had or hadn’t been allowed to stand.
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The simple fact is that good teams are good and bad teams are bad regardless of what technology is or isn’t in place, and regardless of decisions going against them – as this crude alternate universe table bears out.
That is a pretty strong argument for the side of the debate that says VAR is simply more trouble, disruption and controversy than it’s worth, though personally, I think controversy is inevitable whatever system is in effect, because that’s how human beings work.
Either way, it’s food for thought for the clubs, both when it comes to the VAR debate and for how far they should actually be blaming the officials for their struggles, rather than blaming themselves for failing to overcome an outside factor that has been part of the game since time immemorial.
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