Jens Berthel Askou: VAR is making football better by stopping the ‘cheats’

Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou believes VAR is making football better by stopping the “cheats”.

Some of the Dane’s counterparts in the Premiership have expressed increasing frustration with the use of technology after high-profile controversy and many fans have outlined objections.

However, Askou, whose side got a VAR-assisted penalty in Saturday’s win at Kilmarnock, feels video technology is positive for Scottish football.

The former Gothenburg manager said: “I think VAR is serving its purpose in general in football. I came from Sweden, where there was big resistance towards VAR from the fans. Since the clubs were fan owned, they could keep VAR away from Swedish football.

“We’ll have to accept that we don’t always agree with decisions, no matter if they’ve had time to see it on various video screens.

“There will also be situations where the angles they have are not sufficient to see situations well enough.

“That’s room for improvement, to get even better camera coverage, better angles, better zooming opportunities to make it even easier for them to make their calls.

“I think it is helping football in general to develop, because you can’t cheat and make little unseen fouls inside the box anymore. So you have to actually, really defend.

“An offside is an offside, which is fair. You have to trust that they draw the lines in the right place.

“It is driving the game to a better level, that you can’t cheat and steal as much as you could back in the day, where you could be a little bit more cynical.

“I saw a lot of clear penalties not given, both in set-plays and open play in Sweden. I was like, ‘how can they get away with defending like that?’

“It has developed the game in Denmark to a higher level, with more intensity and more tempo and more quality. That and obviously a lot of other reasons.

“There’s always going to be decisions where managers and players will be extremely frustrated. I’ve been on the end of that as well. And we will have to live with that, they’re still human beings making the calls.

“But I am positive about VAR and like everything else in the business, it can be improved and developed. There are probably a lot of people, and also intelligent people, discussing how to develop and improve that even better.

“There’s the goal-line technology, there’s the semi-automatic offside for the bigger leagues with more money. I think eventually it will also be spread out – when the cost gets lower – to smaller leagues and then we will all think that these things have brought us to a better place than we were before.”

Askou’s side host Hibernian on Tuesday looking to build on taking 10 points from four games.

“I have seen more and more sharpness from the attacking players,” he said. “We were able to put them in even more and better situations.

“We have also seen our defensive stability grow. We’ve learned a lot from the first part of the season.

“Now we are entering a new part of the season where it’s getting really, really hectic with a lot of games. It’s going to be exciting to see how we will deal with that.”