Video assistant referee causes controversy every week in the Premier League, but how are decisions made and are they correct?

This season, we take a look at the major incidents to examine and explain the process both in terms of VAR protocol and the Laws of the Game.

Andy Davies (@andydaviesref) is a former Select Group referee, with over 12 seasons on the elite list, working across the Premier League and Championship. With extensive experience at the elite level, he has operated within the VAR space in the Premier League and offers a unique insight into the processes, rationale and protocols that are delivered on a Premier League matchday.

Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Liverpool

Referee: John Brooks
VAR: Stuart Attwell
Incident: Possible red card
Time: 30th minute

What happened: Tottenham’s Xavi Simons was late with a challenge on Virgil van Dijk. Referee John Brooks’ original decision was a yellow card for a reckless challenge.

VAR decision: After VAR review, the referee overturned the original decision of yellow card to Simons and issued a red card for serious foul play.

VAR review: A relatively straightforward process for VAR Stuart Attwell to recommend an on-field review to the referee, once the replays had been reviewed.

The characteristics of a reckless challenge, originally identified by the on-field referee, were not evident in the footage presented to the VAR team when reviewing the incident. Attwell would have been very uncomfortable with Simons’ action, feeling the force and speed of the contact on the back of Van Dijk’s calf endangered the safety of the center back and met the threshold for a possible red card.

Having viewed the challenge from three different angles, at various speeds and paused at point of contact, Attwell had no doubt that an on-field review was required.

Verdict: A correct and positive intervention by VAR in this situation, with Brooks also correct in overturning his original decision of a yellow card once reviewed.

Some will comment that Simons was unfortunate, with no intent and highlighting that these types of challenges can look worse in slow motion. I don’t disagree, but the nature of the contact in this challenge, on the back of the calf and with a level of force and speed, make this a dangerous one regardless.

These types of challenges are difficult to recognize as red card offenses in real time. Processing the point of contact, force and speed when two players are running in the same direction presents a challenge for the referee, and the original decision by Brooks of a yellow card was an understandable one.

Newcastle United 2-2 Chelsea

Referee: Andrew Madley
VAR: Peter Bankes
Incident: Penalty appeal for Newcastle United
Time: 55th minute

What happened: As the ball was played into the Chelsea penalty area, Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah challenged Anthony Gordon, seemingly making no contact with the ball and catching the left leg of Gordon. Referee Andrew Madley deemed it a fair challenge in real time.

VAR decision: The referee’s call of no penalty to Newcastle was checked and confirmed by VAR, with the contact from Chalobah on Gordon deemed to be side-to-side in a shielding action and the ball within playing distance.

VAR review: As with all subjective calls, the starting point for the VAR is the on-field decision and the live communication.

Madley would have seen the contact from Chalobah as normal contact, describing the ball as running out of play. In his opinion, Gordon placed his body in a position to draw and create contact from Chalobah; therefore, Gordon was trying to win a penalty as opposed to it being a foul by the Chelsea defender.

Bankes, having viewed the footage, backed the on-field decision of no penalty, and cleared the decision as correct.

Verdict: This was a foul challenge by Chalobah, and an on-field review and a penalty kick should have been the outcome.

I have some sympathy with Madley on-field, as he would have had some doubt that the level of contact, with the ball running out of play, met the threshold of a foul from his on-field position.

However, the review process by VAR would have highlighted that, despite the direction and destination of the loose ball, Chalobah made a clear, careless foul challenge on Gordon, making no contact on the ball.

It’s difficult to understand why Bankes did not recommend an on-field review to the referee in this event.

Referees are always reluctant to award fouls against defenders in these types of situations — certainly when a defender is adjudged to be guiding the ball out of play and the ball is in playing distance. However, this situation was different. All the evidence from the replays clearly indicate that this was a careless foul challenge by Chalobah, regardless of where the ball was, and an understanding that the defender was not in control of the ball at any point. A clear error had been made on-field and an OFR should have been the outcome.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A few days before the NCAA women’s volleyball national championship, Texas A&M opposite hitter Logan Lednicky posted an old family video on her Instagram account. Lednicky is maybe 5 or 6 years old in the video, wearing a maroon A&M shirt and doing cartwheels on the grass at Kyle Field, A&M’s football stadium. “Say ‘Gig ‘Em, Aggies,'” her mom, Leigh Lednicky, implores her, and little Logan walks up to the camera, smiles and gives a thumbs-up.

Under the video, Lednicky wrote that she is living in that little Aggie’s “answered prayers.”

Her dad, Kyle, was a long snapper for the Texas A&M football team in the 1990s, and her mom worked in the football office. She chose Texas A&M because she always dreamed of being a fourth-generation Aggie, but that was only part of it. She wanted to help build a middling volleyball program into a powerhouse.

Lednicky went beyond that little girl’s dreams Sunday, swatting 11 kills to lead Texas A&M to a sweep over No. 1 seed Kentucky for the program’s first national title. The senior from Sugar Land, Texas, was a linchpin in the Aggies’ improbable December postseason run, helping her team knock off three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament.

In the final four matches of her career, when it mattered most, Lednicky amassed 69 total kills, a team high. She’s one of four seniors who have been with the program from the beginning — they went 13-16 as freshmen — and set the tone for the historic season. The past and present swirled through that class Sunday. With the Aggies cruising in the final set, coach Jamie Morrison high-fived Lednicky, and hung on to her hand.

“I think she had that moment where, ‘This might be the last four points of my college career,'” Morrison said. “I think she actually started getting a little teary on the court. I was like, ‘Oh, no, did I just ruin everything?’ No, it means the world.

“There was a group of them here from the beginning that said, ‘I want to be a part of this, I want to build this program.’ … I don’t think they were envisioning a national championship by the time they were done. I think when we were selling what we were doing, it was building something they could come back to in the future and be really, really proud they helped build.”

It was Lednicky who helped save the season on Dec. 13 in the Sweet 16, when the Aggies were down two sets to Louisville. She hammered a team-high 20 kills in a reverse sweep, and afterward, Lednicky mentioned a random note that someone left on the scorer’s table as her team was teetering toward elimination.

The note said, “Something great is about to happen.”

She has always been the charismatic optimist — the one who keeps things loose. Teammates call her everything from their “ride-or-die” to a best friend.

She has been a recruiter. When Morgan Perkins hit the transfer portal after her freshman season at Oklahoma three years ago, her first text came from Lednicky, an old club teammate. Perkins said the text was something along the lines of, “Hey, Mo-Mo, I see you’re in the portal …”

Lednicky, along with sophomore Kyndal Stowers, helped pull A&M together when the Wildcats sprinted out to a 15-9 lead in the first set. The Aggies later said they dealt with some jitters at the start of the match, but it was short-lived. Lednicky’s kill drew A&M within one, and then she teamed up with Perkins for a block that tied the game. Stowers’ kill completed the rally and gave the Aggies the set, 26-24.

From there, the Aggies dominated. They took a commanding 19-8 lead in the second and pulled away in the third with a Lednicky kill that made it 18-11.

“I was pretty emotional all day today,” Lednicky said, “just knowing that no matter the outcome of this game, it would be my last getting to represent A&M on my chest. Being able to do this with these girls — end like this, I just can’t even believe it.

“I’m so happy I get to carry this with me through the rest of my life and remember all the memories with these girls.”

In the waning moments of the match, a corner of the arena chanted, “Why not us?” It became a slogan for the Aggies in the postseason, during the match against Louisville. Late Sunday, Lednicky gave a shoutout to her boyfriend and teammate Ava Underwood’s boyfriend for coining it for the Aggies at a concession stand in Lincoln, Nebraska.

“We kind of took it and ran with it,” she said. “We started saying it. Ava and Addi (Applegate) wrote it on their shoe. Now it’s on a T-shirt somehow. Shout out to them.

“But, I mean, it’s true. It’s a testament to the hard work this program has put in all year long, staff, players. That’s such a great statement. ‘Why not us’ has turned into, ‘It is us’. I think with that dawg mentality all season long, all tournament long, we knew it was going to be us.”

Morrison, who came to A&M in December 2022 and overhauled the program’s culture, figured it would take at least five years to win it all. He credited the rapid ascent to his team’s work ethic.

Kyle Lednicky waited for his daughter after the match, marveling over how she and her teammates set out to change a program and did it so quickly, and dramatically. He said former A&M football coach R.C. Slocum texted her Sunday morning and wished her luck.

“That was pretty cool,” Kyle Lednicky said.

Of course he always hoped his daughter would go to his alma mater, but he says he never put pressure on her. Maybe it was osmosis, that all those football games, and that maroon clothing, would eventually seep into her consciousness, and her heart. It didn’t matter. That fourth-generation Aggie is now a first-generation champion.

Kyle Lednicky saw his daughter’s Instagram post Thursday, and it brought back a flood of memories.

“I had to put it away,” he said, “because I got teary-eyed when I was looking at it.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — No. 3 seed Texas A&M showed the “grit” it has displayed throughout the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament in Sunday’s final, beating No. 1 seed Kentucky 3-0 to capture the program’s first national championship.

In the first all-SEC title-game showdown, the Aggies trailed by as many as six points in the first set and were down a set point. A kill by redshirt sophomore Kyndal Stowers tied the game at 24-24. A block by Ifenna Cos-Okpalla gave the Aggies a set point. And a Stowers kill sealed it.

The Aggies never trailed the rest of the way.

“As soon as we got within two, I was like, ‘Oh no’ for them,” Texas A&M coach Jamie Morrison said. “They should know better on this team. This team is not going to back down.”

The Aggies had a string of upsets just to make it to the title game, starting with a regional semifinal reverse sweep of No. 2 seed Louisville, followed by a regional final upset against previously undefeated No.1 Nebraska. Texas A&M continued its upset streak by sweeping No. 1 Pitt 3-0 in the semifinals before claiming the national title against Kentucky.

“I just said [to my team], ‘We’ve been here before. We’ve been there twice. I brought up the Louisville match,” Morrison said of his team’s first-set deficit. “We talked about Louisville being down 0-2. We talked about Nebraska. We said, ‘Hey, we’ve been here.’ … I just said, ‘It’s going to take one or two points, start to get firing, they’re going to be there.'”

In the second set, the Aggies held a consistent lead over the Wildcats, finishing 25-15 after an attack error by Kentucky. Texas A&M held onto its lead in the third set and clinched the title when senior middle blocker Cos-Okpalla’s kill brought the score to 25-20.

After leading her team with 11 kills, Texas A&M senior Logan Lednicky fought back tears as she looked back at her four-year career in College Station. The 6-foot-3 opposite hitter credited the nine seniors on her team for helping build this program.

“I was pretty emotional all day today just knowing that no matter the outcome of this game, it would be my last getting to represent A&M on my chest,” Lednicky said. “Being able to do this with these girls, end with [the trophy], end like this, I just can’t even believe it.”

Stowers, who had 10 kills in the title match, claimed the Most Outstanding Player award. The transfer from Baylor medically retired because of concussions before transferring to Texas A&M. Stowers had 17 kills against Louisville, 25 against Nebraska and 16 against Pitt.

“A year ago today, I sat on my couch and watched some good friends of mine actually win this game,” Stowers said of Penn State’s victory over Louisville. “Now, to be living that is genuinely surreal. It was a journey to get here. Good days; bad days. It took this guy sitting next to me [Morrison] believing in me after not playing volleyball for over a year and a half, to take me on his roster and coach me every single day.”

Throughout the NCAA tournament, Texas A&M credited its “grit.” The Aggies were two points away from elimination in the regional semifinals against Louisville. Since that upset, the Aggies outscored their opponents 317-276.

“It’s a testament to the work we put in in the practice gym and just generally in all of our careers,” Lednicky said after the semifinals. “It’s been a long time coming for us, a lot of work put into this moment.”

Kentucky had won four matches in a row against Texas A&M, including a four-set victory Oct. 8. Wildcats coach Craig Skinner pointed to A&M’s passing as the difference.

“They handled our serve really well early,” Skinner said. “Our serving pressure didn’t allow them to get in sync when we were down at College Station [in October]. Today, they were in sync.

“Credit their first contact with their passers of [Ava] Underwood, [Addi] Applegate, [Emily] Hellmuth and Stowers of really doing a good job of providing [Maddie] Waak opportunities to set their whole offense. It was a difficult thing to try and score points on defense.”