Arsenal and Chelsea's Charmed Season: How VAR Errors Shaped the Premier League Title Race

Arsenal lifted the Premier League title this season with a boast that no side in the competition's history had previously managed: not a single red card shown, not a single penalty conceded across an entire campaign. It was held up as evidence of elite discipline and tactical intelligence under Mikel Arteta. The key match incidents panel's data, however, adds several uncomfortable asterisks to that narrative.

According to the Premier League's own KMI panel, Arsenal should have conceded three penalties and received three red cards during their title-winning run. On a net basis, factoring in all VAR and on-field errors, the Gunners finished the season with a score of plus-five - meaning officiating mistakes benefitted them five more times than they were harmed. That is a figure which sits uneasily alongside any claim of an untainted achievement, however genuinely strong the performances elsewhere on the pitch may have been.

The data covers 25 VAR errors across the entire 2025-26 campaign, up from 18 in the previous season. That represents a step backwards after what had been a gradual downward trend: there were 31 errors in 2023-24 and 38 in 2022-23. The improvement over a three-year horizon remains real, but this season's increase is a tangible setback for Professional Game Match Officials, the body responsible for refereeing at the professional level. It is also worth noting that a rise from 18 to 25 errors represents a 39% increase in a single season - not a marginal fluctuation, but a reversal significant enough to demand explanation from PGMO rather than a footnote in their annual review.

The Clubs Who Gained the Most - and the Numbers Behind It

When VAR errors alone are measured, Chelsea and Bournemouth come out as the biggest beneficiaries, each gaining from four incorrect decisions. Chelsea's advantages included two of the three wrongly applied VAR interventions this season: a Fulham goal was incorrectly disallowed, and a penalty was incorrectly awarded against Crystal Palace. Beyond those active interventions, Chelsea should also have conceded penalties against both Brighton and Bournemouth, but escaped scrutiny on both occasions. What makes Chelsea's ledger particularly notable is that two of their four errors involved VAR actively intervening to produce the wrong outcome, rather than simply failing to correct a miss - the system working against its own purpose.

Bournemouth's ledger features a pair of escaped red cards for Marcos Senesi, in matches against Liverpool and Crystal Palace, a wrongly avoided penalty at home to Sunderland, and an incorrectly awarded spot-kick in the return fixture against Palace. That is a remarkable cluster of errors concentrated around one club and, in Senesi's case, around one player. When a single defender escapes two separate red card decisions across a season, it raises questions not just about individual incidents but about whether officials are applying a consistent threshold when reviewing his challenges.

Arsenal's VAR-specific errors included penalties that should have been awarded to Everton and Brighton. When on-field errors not reaching the VAR threshold are included, the picture broadens further. Mikel Merino escaped a second yellow card against Aston Villa in a match Arsenal were drawing 0-0 before winning 4-1. Gabriel should have been sent off against Manchester City. A late penalty awarded to Arsenal against Leeds, for a foul on Max Dowman, was judged incorrectly given.

The Clubs With the Most Cause for Grievance

Leeds United emerge as the single most aggrieved club in the entire dataset. They carry an overall score of minus-four and, strikingly, are the only club in the division not to have had a single officiating error go in their favour across the entire season. Every mistake involving Leeds cut against them. For a promoted side navigating their first top-flight campaign in several years, that consistency of disadvantage in marginal decisions is the kind of statistical footnote that will linger in the memory of supporters and management alike. A newly promoted club, typically fighting to establish themselves against technically superior opposition, absorbing four net errors with zero offsetting benefit is an outcome that goes well beyond the ordinary misfortune of a difficult season.

Crystal Palace and Everton each suffered three VAR-specific errors. The Toffees should have been awarded penalties in matches against Arsenal, West Ham, and Manchester City, a trio of dropped points that could have reshaped their season's trajectory considerably. At the other end of the calculation, Brentford suffered the most on-field errors of any club, with five decisions going against them, though they also benefitted from four in their favour - making them simultaneously the most exposed and the most compensated side in that category.

What the Fan Polling Tells Us About the VAR Debate

Two surveys conducted in recent months present starkly different headlines about supporter attitudes, though both point in the same direction. A Football Supporters' Association poll of just under 8,000 fans found that 75% of supporters of Premier League clubs oppose VAR. A YouGov poll of just over 2,000 people, published more recently, found only 18% wanted the technology scrapped entirely, with 68% favouring changes to how it operates rather than outright abolition.

The gap between those headline figures reflects methodology as much as opinion: the FSA survey targeted engaged supporters directly, while YouGov captured a broader population including more casual viewers. Yet both polls recorded large majorities feeling the game is less enjoyable under the current system, with the FSA figure exceeding 90% and YouGov finding 72% among regular viewers. The direction of sentiment is consistent even if the scale differs. That convergence across two very different sample populations is harder to dismiss than either poll would be in isolation.

Verdict: A System Under Pressure, and a Title With an Asterisk

It would be reductive to suggest Arsenal did not deserve their title. Over the course of a 38-game season, quality accumulates in ways that single decisions cannot simply erase. But the KMI panel data does puncture the cleanest version of the Gunners' unbeaten-on-discipline storyline. Three escaped red cards and three foregone penalties in a campaign decided by margins that, in some gameweeks, came down to a single goal difference: those are not negligible details.

What this season's figures also reveal is that VAR's implementation problem is not primarily about the technology itself, but about the layers of human judgement surrounding it. The increase from 18 to 25 errors suggests that neither the on-field officials nor the VAR operators are applying the system with sufficient consistency. Until PGMO addresses that inconsistency at its root, the numbers will continue to provide ammunition to supporters on every side of the debate, regardless of which club they support.

Sources: Reporting draws on Premier League KMI panel judgements and published polling data from the Football Supporters' Association and YouGov, with club and competition details verified against official Premier League records.