Why VAR won't review corners after Sean Dyche's complaints

Nottingham Forest boss Sean Dyche was frustrated, and you can understand why.

Casemiro's goal for Manchester United on Saturday was the second successive week his side have conceded the opening goal from what seemed to be a wrongly awarded corner - and the video assistant referee (VAR) couldn't look at it as corners are not one of the things it oversees.

Nicolo Savona insisted he had kept the ball in play, but assistant referee Akil Howson flagged for a corner. Six days earlier, Bournemouth's Marcus Tavernier scored direct from a corner which should have been a goal kick.

"Two in two weeks is farcical," Dyche said. "There has to be someone who overrides this decision, because it's gone and they've put it straight in the goal."

When Dyche was Everton boss, he did complain VAR "can't be refereeing every moment" though.

Coincidentally, the technical panels of the International Football Association Board (Ifab) met to discuss potential changes to VAR last week, with incorrect corners which led to goals on the agenda.

The Italian FA suggested corners should become part of VAR's remit, and it was thought to be the most likely change to be introduced because it is normally a factual decision, rather than subjective.

That means time would not be taken up by the referee going to the pitchside monitor.

But there were mixed views from the members of the advisory panels - which feature former players, coaches and referees - and it was rejected, because it would mean checking how the ball went out on every goal that results from a corner.

There's a real worry about adding anything to VAR which would cause additional delays.

And it would also break one of the fundamentals of Law Five that applies at all levels, with or without VAR, which says a referee cannot change a restart decision if he realises it's incorrect after play has restarted. So, once the corner is taken and play is live, the game must continue.

If you're not going to break that key part of Law Five, you have to review every corner - on average there's about 10 per game in the Premier League - and make sure the decision is correct before it's taken. Dyche reckons such a check would take five seconds, but nothing in the world of VAR is that quick.

The Ifab's panels did recommend reviewing second yellow cards shown, because they are not such a regular event, but even that is controversial to some.

In July, Football Association chief executive Mark Bullingham said he was against any expansion of the powers of VAR. That's important, because the Ifab board is comprised of the four United Kingdom football associations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) with one vote each, and Fifa, with four votes.

"We don't think there's any need to extend the use of VAR," Bullingham told BBC Sport. "There are regular discussions in Ifab about what VAR should be, and how it should move forward. I think our position is that we're in a good place now."

Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer had some sympathy with Dyche but, like Bullingham, feels VAR shouldn't be reviewing corners.

"I agree with Sean and understand his frustration and his anger," he said. "I wouldn't like to get VAR involved as it is stopping and starting as it is. I wouldn't encourage that, but I would encourage the officials to do their job properly and get it right, not guess."

Others argue that VAR not reviewing mistakes that are fundamental to the scoring of a goal seems to be against the whole ethos of the system.

The concern is that if you start reviewing corners, what's next? Free-kicks? Throw-ins? Do we then just review everything?

Maybe this will come back round again, but for now it's felt that reviewing corners needs a lot more discussion about the potential impact before a change is considered.

Even if it was an option for VAR there's no guarantee Casemiro's goal would have been ruled out, and it definitely would have taken some time to come to a decision, whatever that was.

With the camera not directly on the goal-line, it could be argued that there wasn't definitive proof of an error, as Arsenal found out to their cost at Newcastle two years ago.

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