The Premier League has announced that “significant progress” has been made with testing of semi-automated VAR offside technology, SAOT, in recent weeks.
It also confirmed there there still plans to introduce the new system this season.
Clubs unanimously voted to bring in the technology almost a year ago.
It was intended to reduce the time for an offside check by an average of 31 seconds.
However, the system was not ready at the beginning of the season.
But it was supposed to be brought in “after one of the Autumn international breaks.”
However, no information has since been given on the progress of testing and it seemed as though SAOT would not arrive this campaign.
“We are still testing it but we are making significant progress,” Tony Scholes, the Premier League’s chief football officer, said on Tuesday.
“We’re in a different place to when I spoke to managers just over Christmas, we’ve made a lot of progress in this area.
“Now I’m hopeful that at some point this season we will be able to introduce semi-automated technology but I repeat the points I’ve made a number of times. We are not going to introduce it if we’ve got any doubts at all with regards to its operation.”
Premier League to still introduce semi-automated VAR offside this season
