Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou has called for an end to the questioning of officials’ decisions in order to prevent their authority being undermined.
Spurs had two players sent off in the 4-1 defeat at home to Chelsea – their first loss of the Premier League season – but Postecoglou refused to criticise referee Michael Oliver.
However, after a first half which had 12 minutes added on due to several VAR checks, the Australian, who himself was cautioned during the game, felt a number of incidents have led to an overuse of technology.
Tottenham remained in with a decent chance of holding on for a point, if not grabbing a win, until they were reduced to nine men as Destiny Udogie received a second yellow 10 minutes after the restart.
Postecoglou himself was also booked by referee Michael Oliver.
Late on, Nicolas Jackson scored a quick-fire hat-trick leaving Spurs well beaten, and their Australian manager to work out where his side had gone wrong.
He told Sky Sports: “It is pretty hard to process. It is almost impossible to analyse the game because it just seemed to get out of control for large parts of it.
“Disappointed by the result but really proud of the players, they gave everything and that is the positive we will take.
“I thought we started really well, scored a great goal and inches away from another. The red card affected the game, I felt like I was standing around waiting for things to happen, with VAR intervention. It felt like a lot of standing around.”
Discussing the role VAR has in modern football, Postecoglou added: “There will be a forensic study of every decision out there, I think that is the way the game is going and I don’t like it.
“If you look at all that standing around we did today, maybe people enjoy that sort of thing but I’d rather see us playing football.”
He continued: “You have to accept the referee’s decision, that is how I grew up. This constant erosion of the referee’s authority is where the game is going to get – they are not going to have any authority. We are going to be under the control of someone with a TV screen a few miles away.
“The decision is the decision. In 26 years I have had plenty of bad decisions, I have had plenty fall in my favour. It is what it is.”