Recalculating the Premier League standings as if VAR did not exist produces a noticeably different picture at Christmas. The most conspicuous change is at the top, where Arsenal and Manchester City trade places and end the day level on points.<\/p>\n
Arsenal owe their two-point cushion over Manchester City to a favourable series of VAR calls against Everton as recently as last weekend. How it took an intervention from the VAR to spot Jake O\u2019Brien\u2019s attempted volleyball spike at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on Saturday night is a question for another day\u2014and one referee Sam Barrott will not want to answer. Viktor Gy\u00f6keres converted the subsequent spot kick to secure Arsenal all three points and take them back above City this Christmas. Everton had a strong penalty appeal of their own overlooked by every official associated with the fixture.<\/p>\n
Arsenal have topped the table on turkey day in four previous Premier League seasons and failed to win the title on each occasion. The last time Arsenal claimed first place on Dec. 25 and at the end of May was the 1947\u201348 campaign.<\/p>\n
Revised table (position \u2014 points):
\n1. Man City \u2014 37 (1 Up)
\n2. Arsenal \u2014 37 (1 Down)
\n3. Aston Villa \u2014 34
\n4. Liverpool \u2014 32 (1 Up)
\n5. Brighton \u2014 26 (4 Up)
\n6. Man Utd \u2014 26 (1 Up)
\n7. Bournemouth \u2014 26 (8 Up)
\n8. Chelsea \u2014 25 (4 Down)
\n9. Sunderland \u2014 25 (3 Down)
\n10. Fulham \u2014 25 (3 Up)
\n11. Everton \u2014 25 (1 Down)
\n12. Tottenham \u2014 24 (2 Up)
\n13. Brentford \u2014 24 (1 Down)
\n14. Crystal Palace \u2014 24 (6 Down)
\n15. Newcastle \u2014 22 (4 Down)
\n16. Leeds \u2014 18
\n17. Nottingham Forest \u2014 18
\n18. West Ham \u2014 13
\n19. Burnley \u2014 11
\n20. Wolves \u2014 2<\/p>\n
Aston Villa\u2019s progress is attributed to managerial work and xG over-performance rather than refereeing. Liverpool would be three points and one place better off without VAR after two penalties awarded to the opposition. Chelsea and Crystal Palace have benefited repeatedly from interventions; Chelsea have earned 0\u20130 draws thanks to the opposition having the game\u2019s only \u201cgoal\u201d chalked off. Bournemouth fans polled by The Athletic were 80% in favour of abolishing VAR. Andoni Iraola\u2019s side have seen two wins taken from them by VAR decisions this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christmas Day table without VAR: Arsenal ahead, Chelsea and Palace fall, others shift places. today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,190,969],"tags":[1162,957,1215],"class_list":["post-5374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-ange-postecoglou","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374","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=5374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}