It’s amazing you have such faith that these officials would get everything spot on without VAR.
We had a weekend without VAR recently and there was offside goals, goals given that didn’t cross the line and clear red cards not given.
No one's claiming that they would get everything spot on. They certainly
don't get everything spot on with VAR. VAR was brought in to catch and correct howlers. It wasn't brought in to re-referee the game or to forensically analyze every goal looking for a reason to disallow it.
And as Gordyola pointed out, in matches without VAR, as far as there being mistakes, part of that is due to the fact that they've forgotten how to referee the game normally. Linos have been trained to keep flags down, due to VAR, so as a result it's not surprising that they will keep the flag down, out of VAR-induced instinct, or "muscle-memory" as he put it. Referees today are now so used to relying on VAR that they are not used to their decision being final, so their accuracy in making decisions on the pitch has been reduced.
As far as goals that didn't cross the line, why wasn't there still goal-line technology in use to correct that? Without VAR you could still have goal-line technology, remember. Football is in a complete state of dysfunction given this situation, with the occasional match without VAR being mixed in to then have missed calls to reinforce the idea that VAR is needed. When in reality, the refs and linos aren't used to not having VAR which causes more missed calls than pre-VAR.
As far as "clear red cards not given" in matches without VAR, that's always been subjective, and we have the same claims being made with VAR. As others have pointed out, football is all about the ball hitting the back of the net and going wild in celebration. That has been lost, and as it pertains to offside, pre-VAR no one had any issue with someones pinky toe being a millimeter offside and a goal standing. The general rule was as long as he's "about" in line with the last defender he's onside. That changed with VAR, so now our "understanding" of what offside is has changed and now we're been indoctrinated in this VAR system to obsess over ever minute detail.
VAR has been horrible for football Hammer. I know you're trying to put a positive spin on it, but we have an obligation to put everything into its proper context.