O’Neil is spouting nonsense on VAR – even if Wolves’ dossier of complaints puts rivals to shame

Wolves have suffered from VAR and refereeing calls far more than any other Premier League team, but Gary O’Neil is wrong about “the impact on my reputation”.

Gary O’Neil was right on one thing. Well, a few things actually. “We should be able to talk about the game and not decisions,” but Carlos Vinicius and Tim Ream should have probably both been sent off and at least one of Fulham’s penalties was incorrectly awarded, while post-match admissions of error and weekly phone calls with a grovelling Howard Webb “don’t help me”.

Wolves “have been here a lot of times this season” and although a select few teams have suffered from more glaring mistakes in isolation, no side has assembled anything close to their dossier of grievances and complaints.

Andre Onana clattering Sasa Kalajdzic. Joao Gomes’s ricocheted handball at Luton. Fabian Schar and George Baldock both being brutally assaulted by the mere concepts of Hwang Hee-chan and Fabio Silva respectively. If decisions truly even themselves out over the course of a season then the 10-0 victory over four-man Liverpool – all penalties, with an incorrectly disallowed goal for the hosts – on the final day will be euphoric.

There are no refereeing agendas, no ingrained FA biases, no PGMOL conspiracies in the Premier League. Yet if any did exist then they would have been designed not to relegate Everton, protect Manchester City or impair Arsenal, but to hold Wolves back from upper mid-table to  lower mid-table.

Beyond that, the most accurate assessment of the situation O’Neil offered in light of a frustrating defeat was to describe “the impact [VAR is] having on my reputation” as “massive”. Just not at all in the way he meant it.

The idea that O’Neil’s standing in the game has been negatively affected as a result of these perceived derelictions of duty is obviously nonsensical. It is fair to discuss how Wolves have been damaged as a club, to speculate how their continued misfortune might theoretically harm the “livelihoods” of employees. Relegation has a real-world consequence beyond the sport; before the final game of last season, Southampton informed more than 340 staff that their roles were at risk of redundancy due to Championship cost-cutting.

READ MORE: VAR chief Howard Webb turns to British Airways to improve Premier League refereeing

But Wolves are 10 points clear of the bottom three even with the sort of hypothetical refereeing deductions that Everton supporters are having to mathematically wade through. The actual danger of the drop is negligible at best; the growing queue of officials making poor calls against them are far more likely to be demoted to the Championship than Wolves.

And if they do somehow contrive to cede such a considerable advantage over far worse teams, the VAR excuse is waiting to be exploited. Until then, O’Neil can supplement any actual Wolves wins with moral victories by channelling his righteous indignation calmly.

Through some eye-catching results against Manchester City and Tottenham, his genuinely impressive Spoke Very Well debut on Monday Night Football in October, the second seamless navigation in as many full-time managerial appointments of openly hazardous circumstances, the residual sympathy from a brutal but understandable Bournemouth sacking, but most of all Wolves’ VAR inequity and the articulate, quietly furious responses to such, O’Neil’s reputation has been enhanced more than that of any other manager this season.

“I like Gary and he’s going to land on his feet,” Cherries owner Bill Foley explained of his controversial decision to replace O’Neil with Andoni Iraola in the summer. “He’s coming out with a CV showing he kept a team from being relegated and kept a team in the Premier League. I believe he’s going to be in coaching for a long time and is going to do a good job.”

It has certainly been amusing, if a little unexpected, to watch O’Neil emerge as the brightest and best of all former mid-2000s Premier League midfielders turned young, English managerial hopes. It will not feel like it in light of another Stockley Park shafting, but in many ways these persistent injustices are the best thing that could have happened to him.