So after another galling weekend for Premier League officials – and their boss Howard Webb – we’ve asked our Mirror Sport team what comes next? How can Liverpool actually be appeased, whether they were right to go public, and the future of VAR in football…
Andy Dunn AS VAR ‘mistakes’ go, the one at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was a freak.
It was a slightly bizarre human error and the PGMOL have coughed to it. That should be the end of it.
Jurgen Klopp was suitably critical but dignified in his immediate response – unlike, it would turn out, the club executives who came out with that ridiculous statement on Sunday.
Jurgen Klopp just about managed to keep his emotions in check, with Liverpool releasing an official statement a day later (
Image:
PA)
Questioning ‘sporting integrity’? Are they implying someone actually deliberately cheated Liverpool out of the goal? ‘Exploring all options’? Is that some sort of threat?
Liverpool were on the wrong end of a shocker on Saturday – they will be on the right end of a shocker another day. Klopp will now get grilled on what exactly that statement means and it is a distraction he could do without.
John Cross Liverpool are well within their rights to issue a statement. Frankly, I’m in favour of anything that shines a light on the VAR farce which feels like it is getting worse with every howler.
Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal felt like a tipping point. The clubs have had enough. Sorry, but if statements are being put out about their players and managers then it’s reached a point where the clubs probably want their say.
The phrase “explore the range of options available” is the one that sticks out. It’s an underlying threat that is never going to come into play.
Premier League clubs effectively sign up to a private members’ club when they are in the top flight. They have to abide by decisions – even when the refs and VAR get them horribly, horribly wrong.
The only time I can recall in recent years of a club stepping outside of that is when the Big Six signed up to the European Super Club which included, dare I say it, Liverpool.
You can’t play this game again. You can improve VAR. And PGMOL boss Howard Webb needs to get cracking. It was always going to take time… but ten months in, it shouldn’t be getting worse.
What is still most baffling to me is why referee Simon Hooper and VAR Darren England did not roll play back and give the goal. They knew their mistake immediately. But they followed protocol which means when a game restarts there’s no going back. What a pair of robotic idiots.
Neil Moxley Just bin the thing. Forget VAR. If it wasn’t before, this situation is now an utter embarrassment. Referees and assistants made mistakes before. They’re making them now, so what’s the difference?
At least before VAR they didn’t have this wretched hand-wringing every time one of the big clubs – and it is mainly the big clubs – feels hard done by.
Compare what happened to Wolves or Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford this season. At least on a par with the mistake – and yes, folks, it was a mistake – that Liverpool suffered on Saturday night. Social media was awash with the usual suspects moaning about the inequity of it all.
Now the Reds have issued a statement. What, pray, do they hope to achieve? The game won’t be replayed. The officials won’t be sanctioned.
All that’s happened is that Liverpool have put more pressure on officialdom instead, perhaps, of looking at themselves. For instance, Diogo Jota’s dismissal was needless and, arguably, cost them the game. Why no statement of contrition over that?
No, let’s give the referees a kicking, instead. Far easier to blame them. So forget VAR, keep goal line technology because that (should be) objective.
Let’s go back to the way it was – even for a one-season trial period – until we work out what the hell is happening to our game. They can start with handball. Another dog’s breakfast.
But VAR is just turning the game into a petty squabble. It’s trial by television and sucking spontaneous joy out of it. So, bin it now. And let’s restore some sanity.
Mike Walters Whether or not you agree with Liverpool’s statement, finally a major club has articulated every fan’s despair and revulsion.
No jumping aboard bandwagons here – I’ve been banging on about VAR as a blight on football like noisy neighbours banging their dustbin lids for years. Scrap it, bin it, bury it in the nearest landfill and put a dozen sticks of dynamite under it just to make sure it doesn’t come back.
If we must put up with it any longer, hire a team of accomplished ex-players to assist the VAR officials in their Stockley Park bunker – because some of them don’t appear to know what they are looking at.
The use of technology in the Premier League is back under the microscope ( Image:
AFP via Getty Images)
My preferred solution remains unchanged – a cricket-style decision review system where managers can lodge appeals against perceived injustices from the dugout.
But we can’t go on like this. Liverpool’s statement has put the game on notice: Sooner or later a VAR gaffe will be so bad it will end up in the High Court, with m’learned friends tearing PGMOL to shreds.
It wasn’t a deliberate mistake, but the Luis Diaz decision stinks – I can detect the noxious stench from my balcony 1,000 miles away.
Daniel Orme VAR is no longer fit for purpose. A system that has been designed to eliminate ‘human error’ from the game has actually been debilitated by it.
Liverpool have every right to feel aggrieved and their calls for a major review into the technology – and the officials that are tasked with using it – should be heeded. With just seven matches of the season complete, constant mistakes from officials appear to be the only talking point so far.
There has to be a major review into the incident. However, replaying the game or awarding retrospective points would set a dangerous precedent across the footballing landscape.
The Reds – whilst their complaints are justified – are not the only side to have been on the wrong side of a poor refereeing performance and will certainly not be the last. Bournemouth slipped out of the Premier League at the end of the 2019/20 season by just a solitary point.
Aston Villa picked up that point due to a 0-0 draw with Sheffield United – goal line technology failing to award a goal to the Blades. That defeat would have seen Villa relegated and Bournemouth stay up – in what is an even bigger financial loss than the gap between third and fourth.
With any change to the Liverpool goal, clubs might look to take action more often with or without VAR which would trigger chaos across the leagues. They need to take PGMOL to task but any hope of changing the result will surely end in frustration and even more confusion.
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Omid Djalili slaps down Gary Neville for ‘nonsense’ comments on Liverpool statement\ 24 hours passed and Liverpool decided to release a statement of their own. The message recognised the error though ultimately slammed VAR’s failings and the damage it has done to the Premier League’s sporting integrity.
Neville then struck a different tone with his response. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, he explained his empathy for the wrongdoing against his former rival – but also his belief that Sunday’s club statement was ‘a mistake’ and a PGMOL apology should be enough to settle the matter.
His shift in perspective confused many and led to more social media disagreements. One of those who came out with a strong – if not the strongest – response to the footballer-turned-pundit was Djalili.
Quoting Neville’s X post, he said: “Gary’s hands are tied so he’s spouting corporate nonsense here and minimising a major incident. I was at #CFCWHU [Chelsea vs West Ham] Sept last year what would have been a good last min West Ham equaliser was chalked off for a supposed foul by Jarrod Bowen on CFC keeper Mendy in the build up.
“The decision was scandalous and the referee’s body PGMOL have since apologised for the decision. But judging a foul is NOT as clear cut as judging offside. This is the first time a goal has been wrongly chalked off on an offside decision.
“Football fans have reacted because you’re either offside or you’re not. As lovers of the game, we have every right to know exactly what went wrong. That it doesn’t happen again is also how the game evolves.”
The London-born comedian, who is a lifelong Chelsea supporter and a self-admitted Ipswich Town follower, then provided an analogy and demanded full transparency of Saturday’s events, starting with publication of the officials’ conversations.
“As an extreme example, if airlines said after every air crash ‘it’s a f@@k up! we’ve all done it’ there would be no airline industry. The first phase of an investigation (yes the analogy fits as chalking off a good goal for offside is metaphorically a ‘crash’) is to obtain the data relevant to the mistake.
“For planes, it’s the black box flight recorder. For Premier league football it’s the conversation between VAR & the referee. This needs to be released into the public domain. The fact that they haven’t means something very wrong has taken place.
“@LFC had a good goal wrongly chalked off against a close rival when down to 10 men which could have a massive impact on the season. As a club they have every right to ask for transparency – as in find out exactly what went wrong – and take it from there.
“In a post-VAR world we are in uncharted territory. Any outcome after such a mistake is on the table, even replaying the game, who knows? But an apology for ‘human error’ – which is precisely why VAR was introduced to guard against – now being used to draw a line under the incident? Not a chance in hell.”
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