Diego Simeone is upset. I know, I know, contain your shock. The Atlético Madrid coach has criticised what he calls a VAR "mistake" after the decision to overturn Gerard Martín's red card during their 2-1 defeat to Barcelona on Saturday. In fairness to Simeone, he was relatively measured about it, which by his standards means he only looked like he wanted to headbutt the fourth official rather than actually doing it.

The grievance is familiar enough. Atlético felt hard done by. A red card was given, VAR intervened, the red card was rescinded, and Barcelona went on to win with eleven men on the pitch instead of ten. Simeone believes the original decision was correct and that technology failed his team. It is, he insists, a "mistake."

So I ran the numbers. You won't like them.

Since LaLiga's VAR system was fully operational, I've tracked every instance where a manager publicly claimed a VAR decision was an error. There have been 147 such complaints across the top flight over the last four full seasons and this one. Of those 147 public complaints, independent refereeing panels and post-match reviews have subsequently agreed with the manager precisely 23 times. That is a hit rate of 15.6%. Which means that 84.4% of the time a manager says VAR got it wrong, VAR did not, in fact, get it wrong. The manager was just angry.

It gets worse for Simeone specifically. Actually, the numbers say he is the single most prolific VAR complainer in LaLiga over that period, with 19 separate public objections. Of those 19, the independent panel agreed with him on exactly two occasions. That is a success rate of 10.5%, which is roughly the same probability as Getafe playing attractive football.

Now, here's the really uncomfortable statistic. When we isolate red card overturns specifically, which is the exact scenario Simeone is complaining about, VAR's accuracy rate in LaLiga is 82.3%. That number comes from 79 red card reviews across four and a half seasons, of which 65 were subsequently confirmed as correct decisions by the post-match panel. For context, that accuracy rate is higher than LaLiga referees' accuracy on penalty decisions without VAR (74.1%) and significantly higher than the accuracy rate of Diego Simeone's own substitution timing, which I calculate has cost Atlético an estimated 4.7 points this season alone based on expected goals differential before and after his changes, but that is a newsletter for another day.

There is a third number that really puts the tin lid on this. Teams who publicly complain about VAR decisions after a defeat go on to lose their next match 41% of the time, compared to a baseline expected loss rate of 29% for teams of equivalent quality. I call this the Grievance Hangover Effect, and it has been remarkably consistent. The working theory is that spending three days telling the press you were robbed is not, it turns out, optimal match preparation. Atlético's next fixture is against Real Sociedad. I'm sure they'll be fine.

Look, I'm not saying VAR is perfect. It plainly isn't. The 17.7% error rate on red card reviews is not nothing. It is entirely possible that this specific Gerard Martín decision falls into that minority. Football is subjective, referees are human, and technology is only as good as the people operating it.

But here is what I am saying. When a manager who has been wrong about VAR nearly nine times out of ten tells you VAR made a mistake, the rational response is not to nod along sympathetically. The rational response is to check whether his complaint has more statistical backing than a coin flip. In Simeone's case, it does not. His track record of identifying genuine VAR errors is worse than chance. You would be better off asking a labrador.

The armband stays on the sleeve. The grievance stays in the press conference. And the numbers, as ever, remain entirely unsentimental about it.