OK, if I really went for this I could assemble an argument that would say you are only replacing one lottery with another lottery.
Say a 5 star lottery like it is now being replaced with a 2-3 star lottery let's say. A reasonable improvement.
That star improvement has costs for me, I recognise the improvement - eliminate whopper errors, improved player behaviour probably, being the major ones.
Major costs: a more broken-up game (it's got far too faffy already - if you can't play get off the fecking pitch (I just wanted to say that,
) and time wasting substitutions in the last 10 minutes. They can go, as well.
And then how the game gets played with VAR in place, less good teams rely on the 'dark arts' I'm afraid. And getting lucky. I sense that some of you aren't bothered about that, which I think is a shame, but fair enough, I don't have a strong argument against it.
As for implementation, I think the Utd PSG penalty works quite well - someone says to the ref, there is something we've all missed here, & the VAR sorts it out. I also think the referee ought to be able to ask for help. Both of these things, and it has to be a 2 way operation. I think it also rules out the challenge idea - which will eventually result in a 'whopper' being missed, thereby defeating the whole object if you want it done properly.
I still say ALL goals ought to get checked, penalties & as I've said this accursed offside rule, without casually dismissing as too old anything over 10 seconds old. I think this is difficult. For example, I might want the offside (it's a turnover of possession) - I'm definitely not getting that so I want it for goals which happen in the same passge of play - these can be quite long, it's starting to get over complicated. So I'm getting a fairer game for everything except offsides.
Even just the above stuff is quite a lot of checking. Is anyone going to say, you don't have to check everything? That rather eats away at the 2 star lottery improvement we just theoretically established.
However, if you don't do it for offside I personally start to dislike VAR again. Based mainly on my hatred of the randomness of the current offside/onside situation rather than VAR. Illogical possibly I suppose.
So, let's have an imaginary game that has a score of 2-2 at halftime & has had 2 penalty appeals as well. A proper thriller.
2 minutes apiece for each VAR, the time is added back, so that's another 12 minutes, it's not the same 12 minutes obviously. 2 minutes of standard additional time, because of the goals. And I think that's a half of football lasting 71 minutes. But's it's fair-ish. More than it was before.
They would be my general objections, packaged up as semi-ridiculously but not totally outrageously as I could manage.
Obviously it's not all the time. But defending is going to get terribly difficult for the less good sides. But again, I'm sensing that a lot of you aren't bothered about this. Which I don't agree with, but is a valid point of view.
I suspect we're just going to say ''any VAR is better than no VAR'' - which is clearly not the case I don't think.