The Premier League reveals that the waiting time for VAR decisions skyrocketed last season | first division

He first division has admitted to clubs that video refereeing (VAR) delays increased by more than 50% last season, as it plans to confirm a video refereeing “improvement plan” at its annual general meeting on Thursday.

The Annual General Meeting in Harrogate will be a combustible and momentous event, with a vote on The wolves' proposal to eliminate the VAR one of several divisive issues being debated. The meeting also comes just days before the Premier League defends a Legal suit filed by its current champion, Manchester City.

While it is anticipated that Wolves will fall short of the 14 votes needed to make changes to the Premier League rules, submissions made by the league in response to the club appear to confirm a central premise of the complaint; that the VAR has disturbed the game too much.

According to the report written by the league's director of football, Tony Scholes, and seen by The Guardian, the average delay in a VAR check lasted 64 seconds in the 2023-24 season, up from 40 seconds the previous season. Scholes attributes the long delays to officials taking more time to ensure decisions are correct after the notorious failure to give Liverpool a legitimate goal during their 2-1 loss to Tottenham last September.

In their own six-page report, which was distributed to clubs ahead of the AGM, Wolves argue that “the use of VAR has led to further disconnection among fans attending Premier League matches due to its adverse effects on the match experience.” and that “the current version of VAR is incompatible with the subjective nature of football laws, putting the league's position as the best in the world at risk.”

In the league's response, Scholes argues that the planned introduction of semi-automatic offside technology should reduce delays next season. He also warns about the costs of replacing VAR and reveals a planned change to official language, removing the phrase “clear and obvious” as a reference point for VAR interventions. Instead, the term “referee call” will be introduced, with the intention of clarifying the primacy of any on-field decision. These decisions should only be overturned if they are “clearly wrong,” according to the new terminology.

In other developments, plans to overhaul the league's equally controversial sustainability and profit rules will be delayed. Officials had expressed their intention to agree new rules this summer, with plans involving an “anchoring” scheme at its centre. This proposal would impose limits on player-related spending, so the league's richest clubs would only be able to spend a fixed multiple of the profits of the bottom team in the division.

While the anchoring was approved in principle by the clubs in a vote in April, it has since met with rejection from the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), which fears the move could lead to a de facto salary cap and has hired representation legal to challenge it. Now the Premier League has stopped putting the full range of financial regulations to a confirmatory vote at the Annual General Meeting and will instead trial anchoring and squad cost ratio measures on a shadow basis from next season.

League sources say this is an improvement over the previous proposal, giving clubs a chance to evaluate strengths and weaknesses before a final vote is taken next year.

The independent tribunal that will hear City's case against the Premier League, in which the four consecutive champions are challenging everything from sponsorship rules to the means by which decisions are made in the competition, will last two weeks.