Premier League without VAR – Newcastle climb out of relegation zone, Spurs slump to 10th

It’s been a tough season for Newcastle United fans, even though they became the richest club in the world following their Saudi Arabia-led takeover earlier this year.

The Magpies remain marooned in the relegation zone, level on points with rock-bottom Norwich City. And with 11 goals conceded, and just one scored, in their last three games there is little Christmas cheer among the fans.

The club and their supporters aren’t only unhappy with the team but with the referees as well. So much so that the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that the relegation-threatened club are ready to make a formal complaint to the Premier League over the standard of officiating in their matches.

And ESPN can reveal that without the decisions of the VAR, Newcastle would be outside the drop zone looking down on their rivals.

This season we’re looking at all VAR decisions across the Premier League, and seeing how they might have affected the outcome of games.

It’s not just about the number of times a team gets a favourable VAR call or about how many goals are affected. What’s more important is when these VAR decisions take place, how they might have changed the course of the game and, crucially, whether that impact would ultimately have changed the final score.

ESPN brings you the VAR Effect Table. We’ve taken all 59 VAR decisions in the Premier League so far this season and calculated how they might have changed the outcome of matches. We’ll continue to track VAR throughout the season and find out who the true winners and losers are.

– JUMP TO: The winners without VAR | The losers without VAR

How we work out the VAR Effect Table

We take only the first VAR overturn in each game, because the calculation considers that any subsequent VAR incident wouldn’t have happened because the whole direction of the game has been altered. (Think of it like a Marvel timeline, or the plot of any time travel movie.)

The VAR decision is then reversed to the original on-field call — so if a goal is…