Referees made all the headlines in the Premier League last weekend due to major and costly VAR errors. Three major errors had a fundamental influence on the final score of the games with significant importance. As a result, Premier League referee chief Howard Webb has called a meeting for Tuesday.
The meeting deals with what happened in the West Ham-Chelsea, Brighton-Crystal Palace and Arsenal-Brentford matches. In the first, there was apparently a clear hand in the box from West Ham’s Tomas Soucek. VAR ruled that it was not a handball, much to the chagrin of Chelsea on Twitter.
Elsewhere, VAR official John Brooks mistakenly disallowed a Brighton goal against Crystal Palace. Brooks drew the offside lines incorrectly and the goal did not stand. If Brooks drew the lines correctly from Mark Guéhi, the goal would have stood. Then, in Arsenal’s game against Brentford, VAR officer Lee Mason only looked at the position of a Brentford player, Ethan Pinnock, who was playing. Christian Nørgaard, who played the ball in the build-up to Ivan Toney’s equalizer, was offside. The goal should not have counted.
As a result of Mason’s mistake, Arsenal lost points again, cutting their lead at the top of the table to three with a game against Manchester City on Wednesday.
Referees meeting to address VAR errors in the Premier League
John Brooks, the VAR officer for the Brighton-Palace match, had the same role for Monday’s Merseyside Derby between Everton and Liverpool and Wednesday’s Arsenal-City match. However, the umpire staff removed Brooks from those assignments. Instead, Andre Marriner and David Coote will be the VAR referees, respectively.
Howard Webb is a defender of VAR. Still, he admits that he holds his officials to a higher level. Tuesday’s meeting will go over the latest calamities and also decide referee assignments for next weekend’s games.
These three errors are not the first cases in which VAR is the headline after key matches. The offside in the Manchester derby due to Bruno Fernandes’ goal was certainly a hot topic, as was Gabriel Martinelli’s opening goal against Manchester United.
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