Pep Guardiola's Stance on VAR Amid Title Race Tension

Pep Guardiola has never hidden his distaste for VAR. This week, with the title race tightening and controversy raging, he stripped away any remaining diplomacy.

“I never trust anything since they (VAR) arrived a long time ago,” the Manchester City manager said, the words carrying the weight of a man who has seen too many big moments vanish into a screen at Stockley Park. “Always I learned you have do it better, do it better, be in a position to do it better because you blame yourself with what you have to do, because [VAR] is a flip of a coin.”

In a season where a single decision could tilt the Premier League trophy one way or the other, Guardiola wants no part of the narrative that officials or technology will decide his team’s fate. Not after the weekend just gone.

Arsenal’s break, City’s warning

The tension at the top spiked when Arsenal squeezed past West Ham with a 1-0 win that owed as much to a video review as to their own resolve. Deep into stoppage time, the London Stadium erupted. Callum Wilson thought he had grabbed a dramatic equaliser, only for the moment to be dragged into the now-familiar limbo of a VAR check.

Darren England, on duty in the booth, sent referee Chris Kavanagh to the pitchside monitor. The replay showed Pablo Felipe tangling with David Raya in the build-up. Foul, said Kavanagh. Goal disallowed. Arsenal survived.

The fallout was immediate. The decision left the Gunners five points clear at the top, City lurking behind with a game in hand and a growing sense that the smallest margins, and the quietest conversations in the VAR room, could define the run-in.

Guardiola refused to take that bait.

“One is a job for the institutions that rule the competition,” he said, pushing the whole debate back towards the Premier League and its officials. His message to his players was blunt: forget the noise, forget the screens, win the games.

Scars from Wembley

His mistrust is not theoretical. It is rooted in Wembley, in finals that still sting.

“We lost the two finals of the FA Cup because the referees didn’t do their jobs they should do, even the VAR,” he insisted, revisiting the moments that hardened his stance.

In the 2024 FA Cup final against Manchester United, Guardiola watched Erling Haaland hit the deck under a challenge from Lisandro Martinez and waited for the penalty that never came. Later in the same game, he saw Haaland grappled by Kobbie Mainoo at a corner as City chased a way back into a match they would lose 2-1. Again, no intervention, no rescue from the technology that was supposed to tidy up the game’s biggest errors.

The 2025 final brought more of the same frustration. Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson appeared to handle the ball outside his area. It looked obvious from the stands, obvious on replay. Yet play went on, and City were left to swallow another sense of injustice.

For Guardiola, these are not footnotes. They are case studies in why he refuses to lean on VAR as any kind of safety net. If anything, those experiences have driven him further into his core belief: control what you can, and accept that everything else is chaos.

Blinkers on, title in sight

So he turns back to the training pitch and the schedule. Crystal Palace away on Wednesday night, then another FA Cup final on the horizon, this time against Chelsea. A season can unravel in weeks from this point. Or it can be defined.

“I always learned that when you lose the focus, you are in a dangerous situation,” he said, outlining a philosophy that has followed him from Barcelona to Bayern Munich and now to Manchester. “The only thing we can do is do it better, that is only in your control. You have to do better and better for yourself, and that is focusing on Crystal Palace for us.”

No pleas for sympathy. No expectation that the system will suddenly bend in his favour. Guardiola has seen enough to know better.

The title race is tightening, the scrutiny on VAR is intensifying, and the margins are shrinking by the week. City will walk into Selhurst Park and then Wembley knowing one thing: if they are still talking about the referee at full-time, something in their own performance has already gone badly wrong.