The 2025\/26 Premier League season shows how a single distant review can alter outcomes and, cumulatively, the shape of the table. Arsenal have gained five points from VAR interventions and would still lead the division without video review, but by a much narrower margin. With VAR Arsenal sit on 79 points; without it they would have 74.<\/p>\n
Manchester City have seen only one fixture materially affected by a VAR overturn. In January they were awarded a first-half penalty which Erling Haaland converted at home to Brighton & Hove Albion. Brighton\u2019s Kaoru Mitoma later scored what would have been a match-winner but the VAR correctly identified a blatant trip from Diego G\u00f3mez on J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku, turning three points into one for the champions.<\/p>\n
Brighton are the side most disadvantaged by VAR this term. They would be seven points better off without it and would sit above Liverpool and Aston Villa in the top four. Opponents have been awarded three penalties on VAR reviews against Brighton, while the Seagulls were denied a spot kick in a goalless draw with Crystal Palace. They have also had two potential equalizers overturned by delayed offside checks.<\/p>\n
Bournemouth have also been hindered by video review, provoking repeated objections from Andoni Iraola, who remarked: \u201cWe have very short sleeves,\u201d he bizarrely pointed out. The Basque coach has questioned where officials draw the line on handball decisions.<\/p>\n
Liverpool and Manchester United would show the same points totals regardless of VAR. For Liverpool, however, perceptions of inconsistency persist. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a surprise to anyone this season that if there\u2019s a VAR intervention or if there\u2019s something that could be left or right [50-50] then the decision goes against us,\u201d the Liverpool manager fumed after his side conceded a controversial goal at the hands of United\u2019s Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko . Recent weeks, though, have seen VAR both penalise and aid the Reds with overturned calls and flagged offside goals.<\/p>\n
Only Sunderland have benefited more from VAR than Arsenal. Key interventions for the Gunners came across three matches. Some decisions, such as the disallowed Callum Wilson goal for West Ham, are widely accepted as correct; others remain contested, including events in Arsenal\u2019s 1\u20130 win over Everton where the Key Match Incidents panel found Everton were wrongly denied a penalty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VAR decisions reshaped 2025\/26: Arsenal +5 from calls, Brighton lose 7 points, City affected once.OK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13754,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,773,172],"tags":[1162,1637,317],"class_list":["post-13755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-assists","tag-benjamin-sesko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}