Sheffield United set to experience key VAR change after Premier League promotion

Sheffield United and their fellow Premier League sides will not benefit from automated offside in the top-flight next season but officials will have four extra cameras in stadiums to help snuff out high-profile errors that continue to attract criticism of the VAR system.

United will experience the Video Assistant Referee system week in, week out again next season after regaining their place in the Premier League. Their last spell in the top flight saw them both benefit and suffer from decisions, while their last experience saw a penalty given against them in their FA Cup quarter-final at home to Blackburn Rovers.

After the system proved successful at the winter World Cup there was speculation that automated offside, featuring chips in the ball and designed to minimise the time for decisions to be made, would be introduced into the Premier League from the 2023/24 season.

According to The Times that will not be the case, although VARs will have four extra cameras in stadiums - including Bramall Lane - to help their decisions when the new campaign gets underway in August. Clubs have decided not to introduce automated offside, which has also been used in the Champions League, just yet - meaning it may be 2024/25 until it is introduced in England.

UEFA and FIFA are fans of the technology but the Premier League will continue to test it before it is approved for use. The decision to provide extra cameras for VARs comes after two high-profile incidents in which players were not covered by available angles.

Officials hope that the extra angles will avoid the criticism that followed after games last season plagued by decisions that later appeared incorrect, with the benefit of extra camera angles. But with automated offside not approved for use, VARs will still have to manually draw the crosshairs for close calls - which isn’t a foolproof system, either. In February, VAR John Brooks was dropped for two games after wrongly disallowing a goal for Brighton against Crystal Palace, after drawing the lines in the wrong place.

On the same weekend, an illegitimate equaliser for Brentford against Arsenal was allowed after the VAR, Lee Mason, forgot to check offside in the build-up to the goal. Howard Webb, the Rotherham-born chief of the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd and the man in charge of VAR in this country, was forced to apologise.

Such incidents undermine confidence in the VAR system and offer ammunition to the technology’s critics. United boss Paul Heckingbottom, however, is a fan of VAR and has even previously called on it to be implemented in the Championship, after feeling his side were on the wrong end of a number of poor decisions in the second-tier during his time in permanent charge.