Saturday’s clash between Brighton & Hove Albion and West Bromwich Albion saw VAR and the Premier League eat itself again across another beguiling seven minutes.

After winning a foul on the edge of the West Brom penalty area, Brighton’s Lewis Dunk caught out West Brom keeper Sam Johnstone with a quick free kick as Johnstone set up his wall. Referee Lee Mason™ is confirmed to have blown his whistle, giving Dunk the go ahead to take the free kick. The goal that followed seemed legitimate, but was immediately called back.

Referee Lee Mason™ could barely believe it himself.

Then he decided to give the goal.

Waffling like a griddled snack

But the decision felt lukewarm; an uncertainty hung thick in the stadium. And so Referee Lee Mason™ set about waving one hand in the direction of various players while keeping the other pressed to his earpiece. No one knew quite what was going on.

At no point did Referee Lee Mason™ give any sense that he was in control or in mind of what to do next. He looked in need of a bailout. And it came from VAR, though not in the way that you’d think.

VAR is meant as a tool for deciding situational discrepancies like handballs and offsides. What VAR is not meant as is a foil for a match official’s incomprehension.

In the time that Referee Lee Mason™ spent wandering the field avoiding the invective of players, it seemed certain that he was receiving instructions from those at Professional Game Match Officials Group (PGMOL) on how to dig himself out of the sizeable hole he’d dug.

Getting Dunked on

And so Referee Lee Mason™ disallowed Lewis Dunk's goal again. VAR deemed that he'd blown his whistle for a second time (possibly to cover up that fact that he was shitting his pants) before Dunk’s free kick - for which he’d only seconds before whistled the go ahead - had crossed the line.

There was a second whistle?

If you haven’t seen it yet, Lewis Dunk’s post-match interview is worth a watch. He appears as confused as he does livid as his interviewer explains the justification for the disallowed goal. Dunk's comments, particularly calling Referee Lee Mason™ to the interview block to explain himself, are sure to earn him a fine.

But Lewis Dunk wasn’t alone in this mystery. Even Sam Allardyce didn’t get it, though West Brom’s manager was smart enough to cloak his words: "I'm not sure you can take a quick free-kick any more. Have you seen a quick free-kick this season? There are so many bizarre rule changes today. We don't really know categorically what we should or should not be doing in these situations."

This from a man whose integrity scale cannot safely be defined as 'rigid'.

Scrap it. Re-define it. Start again.

The Premier League is at a point where its version of VAR is little more than a 5/10 logo and a chance to go for a nervous pee. The league and PGMOL continue to erode the credibility of good match officials by helping hatch escape plans in their earpieces after making mistakes they don’t know how to fix.

Most will accept an offside or a handball decision from VAR, as painful as it may be. But that’s when it acts as a definitive technology. The situation with the Albions and Referee Lee Mason™, is at best an edge case, and at worse the surest signal yet of a failed system that no one knows how to claw back in a way that saves anyone any face.