Norwich City manager Daniel Farke’s team already had a defender fitness problem when Christoph Zimmermann was forced out of an eventual 2-0 to West Ham United on Saturday.
And the boss is wondering what exactly VAR was doing when Zimmermann was hurt by a sliding Sebastien Haller challenge and, in Farke’s mind, hampered in trying to stop Haller’s goal minutes later.
[ RECAP: West Ham 2-0 Norwich ]
“I’m a friend of VAR, but on this day it didn’t work”
While his below comments are entirely accurate -- Haller was the scorer of the goal in question, not celebrating atop the scorer -- it’s easy to see why Farke is angry as another center back goes for scans.“This is a game where VAR didn’t work,” Farke said. “There was a nasty tackle against my center back and it wasn’t even given as a free kick. Then a few mins later my center back wasn’t able to spring back and block the cross (on Haller’s goal). My center back is now in hospital. My feeling was this made the difference.
“The only thing I say is that my center back is in hospital and the other player is on the shoulders of the West Ham goalscorer.”
Criticizing every instance of VAR is going to get tiring, and no one wants VAR to be able to call fouls and award yellows -- let’s not take that away from the field -- but is there a larger point here?
It may not take so long for VAR to get used to the Premier League, remember that the on-field refs are going to have growing pains: Worried about the flow of the game, let alone their own ego after review, it seems we’re in for more fits and starts.
Also don’t forget that this was a comfortable win for West Ham United, who put 8 of its 18 shots on target, and Farke’s required to talk about something after the game. “We were outclassed today” isn’t less fun as a line of reasoning.
