“It's not VAR that's the problem. It's the referees.”
That was a common response to news of the Premier League’s vote on video assistant referees, proposed last week with some degree of showmanship by Wolverhampton Wanderers. It's futile and Wolves know it, but I suppose they've made their point.
This opinion – albeit tidied up here in order to make something approaching sense – has been around since the moment the people who wanted VAR realised it necessarily involved the same referees they already thought biased against their teams for some reason.
It's red-hot nonsense. Critics of VAR use the term “VAR” as a shorthand for process, people and equipment just like everyone else. Very few would admit to not trusting the technology; cameras have been around for a while.
Notwithstanding question marks over the accuracy of offside decisions (the significant matter of frame rates is conveniently brushed aside despite the millimetre precision supposedly applied to decisions), nobody is really saying the technology is the problem.
When people criticise VAR, they're criticising it all, from nose to tail. They are expressing an opinion that's misrepresented by a bunch of soft internet weirdos who think there's a dozy luddite lobby against corrupt cameras.
It is the technology. It is the referees. It is the process. It is the system. It is the governance. It is the laws of the game.
It is VAR.
So here's to you, Unai Emery
£100m made Jack Grealish the most expensive British footballer ever. It was the highest transfer fee paid by a British club. It is, by any measure, an awful lot of money. City Football Group's ability to spend it with such ease is its own problem. For Villa, it was and is a significant sum.
But when Grealish elected to join Manchester City, Villa lost more than they made. Their captain made his move happen in search of trophies, presumably in the knowledge that the rough edges of his game were the very reason his game was what it was.
Grealish had the ability to become a polished Pep Guardiola player and chose to do so. He eschewed a future as an enigmatic, unpredictable genius with a statue at the club where he grew up. The present he put behind him was worth more to Villa than they were paid for him.
Villa scrapped their way back to the Premier League in 2019 through a happy combination of loanees and a handful of players who were among the best in the EFL Championship. Tyrone Mings and Tammy Abraham personified the former, John McGinn and Conor Hourihane the latter.
The driving force behind Villa’s promotion, though, was the two-headed force of claret and blue nature that was Grealish and his manager, Dean Smith. Their leadership would lead to a photograph of them being used to wrap part of the North Stand façade at Villa Park. If he'd stayed another ten years, Grealish might eventually have had his name on it too.
Back in the Premier League, he fulfilled his extraordinary potential as Villa survived in the first season and improved in the second. Grealish left in the summer of 2021 and the effect was felt for years. Smith had long since departed by the time the reverberations stopped.
That Grealish was an unused substitute when City’s win over Tottenham Hotspur put the seal on Villa’s qualification for the Champions League tells its own story. Watching on a big screen at their presentation evening 24 hours after a dramatic draw with Liverpool, Villa celebrated their return to Europe’s premier club competition for the first time since a European Cup exit as holders in the quarter-final in 1982/83.
The transition from Smith to Unai Emery was far from serene. After a spell with Arsenal, Emery had led Villarreal to a Europa League win and the Champions League semi-final. Villa, meanwhile, had unravelled under the hollow management of Steven Gerrard.
Villa owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens deserve immense credit for the club's recovery but in combination with Christian Purslow they made a big misstep in appointing a manager who brought nothing to the job and never put a foot right. Gerrard was belatedly sacked in October 2022 and Villa opted for a backroom revolution in his wake.
The staff at Bodymoor Heath is shot through with direct Spanish influence. Monchi is the club’s President of Football Operations. Pako Ayestarán, Pablo Villa and Rodri are among the first team coaching crew. Damian Vidagany and Alberto Benito report to Monchi on recruitment. Moises de Hoyo heads up fitness and conditioning. Emery’s son Lander is on the books and was an unused substitute for Villa’s last game of the season.
Emery Senior has become a very powerful figure at a very significant institution. Sawiris and Edens have put their faith in him entirely as the man whose vision will guide Villa’s football operations. It's a modern manifestation of a traditional football management philosophy and it gives Emery more clout than any Villa manager for generations.
Crucially, it also strengthens the bond between the manager and the club. Emery is building in his image, with his people, and the hope in the boardroom and on the Holte End alike is that otherwise tempting job offers from elsewhere might be easier to resist.
Handing over the reins is a big commitment on the part of the owners and Emery warrants it completely. Villa's owners have been rewarded immediately for their faith and Emery seems like he's been at Villa Park for years longer than he really has.
Sometimes football pairs a club with a player or a manager who just seems to fit. Grealish has Premier League titles to his name but he'll never recapture the essence of what he meant at Villa. Smith succeeded before Villa but his stewardship of his own club was special.
Emery is not from Birmingham, nor is he an Aston Villa supporter, but he gets it. That doesn't make him good at his job but it certainly helps supporters feel a connection.
Villa's form recovered after the walking nadir that is Gerrard and it wasn't a fluke. Under Emery in 2023/24, Villa played with a plan. There was a strategy backed up by tactics that were frequently effective.
From the famous high defensive line to continuing trust in specialist set piece coach Austin MacPhee, Emery's Villa stick to what they know and know what they stick to. That's seldom been the case at a club more used to chronic listlessness.
Emery’s management and Villa’s transfer business under the new regime held together a season that was affected by a string of serious injuries. It's a tribute to the man and the system that the total losses of Emi Buendia, Tyrone Mings, Jacob Ramsey and Boubacar Kamara – and further injuries throughout the season – were not enough to drag Villa out of the top four.
They drifted at times. With key players out, it was inevitable. But Emery doesn't see those absences as an excuse and delivered a season of highlights regardless. In December, Villa chased Manchester City and Arsenal out of Birmingham in the space of four days. They lost only three league matches before Christmas, thrashing Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion along the way.
Crucially, they beat Tottenham Hotspur in London at the end of November. Arsenal were beaten again in mid-April, between Europa Conference League quarter-final legs against Lille. Villa reached the semi-final before visibly running out of steam against Olympiacos.
These were golden days on the pitch but it hasn't all been sweetness and light since Purslow followed Gerrard out of the door. Villa's commercial operations have been questioned often.
In 2022, the FA stated that, “Under the new rules, if a club wishes to make a material change to its club crest, or change its recognised home shirt colours, it must undertake a thorough and extensive consultation process with supporters.”
In Villa’s case, the process of updating the club crest was a fiasco and the outcome was a season in which they had two active badges and then released a very questionable one that should, by rights, have caught the eye of the governing body.
Whatever the standard expected of clubs changing their crests, Villa have fallen a good way short of it and it’s not out of character.
V Sports appointed Chris Heck as its President of Business Operations at the end of the 2022/23 season and he has become the unpopular face of a number of off-field criticisms among supporters.
Ticket price increases, membership tinkering, premium seats, the shambolic introduction of The Terrace View and the decision to sneak more than one gambling sponsorship deal under the wire before the imminent ban might be commercially excusable, and not all supporters are bothered by it.
But those who are bothered have right on their side. For many, Villa's success on the pitch has coincided with slipping ethics and the deterioration of a matchday experience for which they're paying more. Some have even been ejected from their season ticket seats to make way for hospitality facilities they cannot access.
Sticking a crap, unwanted cover band on a stage to dilute the pre-match atmosphere outside the ground doesn't make up for that. Pyrotechnic displays and third-rate currywurst in the concourses are nothing but window-dressing.
They might have only stumbled over the Champions League line in the end but Villa are at the peak of their modern powers thanks to an excellent manager and the structures being built around him. But, while it doesn't usually happen in the global glare of the floodlights and television cameras, all the other stuff matters to match-going supporters too.
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“I was emphatic throughout the interview process that I want to improve, with consultation and consensus, the operation and delivery of VAR for all concerned. I want to alleviate the unsustainable burden on our match officials and improve relations and mutual respect between match officials, club officials, players, coaches and fans.”
Willie Collum, Scotland’s new refereeing chief, makes some of the right noises about VAR. The only way to fix VAR is to abolish it, but its application in Scotland has been shonky enough – not least in how it works to the detriment of the perception of officials – to warrant intermediate improvements.
Salty beef extracts
Villa gatecrash the Champions League and it's the stuff of dreams (House of V)
Aston Villa back in big time on their own merits (The Observer)
‘Bigger, better, stronger’: why the EFL’s appeal has never been greater (The Observer)
Three up three down is a sign of the Premier League times (Unexpected Delirium)
The EFL Championship: A league in which no-one is good enough (Unexpected Delirium)
VAR chat turns existential, but will anything change? (Unexpected Delirium)
Messi is frustrated with MLS’s time-wasting rules. And they could go global (The Guardian)
Super Depor are on their way back, led by the sacrifices of Lucas Pérez (The Guardian)
‘Up there with Ian Wright’: How Michael Olise stole Crystal Palace hearts (i)
Dessert
This is the Air Jordan 4 RM in Black/Light Bone. My verdict? Broadly in favour.
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