THE PREMIER LEAGUE has released VAR audio from major incidents in the league so far this season and fans have been left fuming.
Whilst reviewing the audio, PGMOL Chief Refereeing Officer Howard Webb has spoken out about the decision by Simon Hooper to not award a penalty for Andre Onana’s clumsy collision with Sasa Kalajdzic.
The incident had sparked huge controversy when Onana collided with the striker during Man United’s matchup against Wolves.
The Premier League has now revealed the VAR’s audio from the incident which prompted an apology from John Moss for getting the decision wrong at the time.
Most fans thought it should have been a penalty to Wolves and it seems that Webb is in agreement them.
He said: “I think from the outset I want to say that should have led to an intervention by VAR. We should have seen a video review being recommended and the referee should have gone to the screen.
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“I’m confident he would have seen the images that we’ve seen and would have awarded a penalty.”
Webb went on to say he thinks that the officials were overthinking the decision and therefore failed to do the right thing.
He said: “[The VAR] starts to go down the road, I believe, towards recommending a video review, but then he overthinks it a little bit. Sometimes the VARs can do that.
“They’re trying to identify what the game would expect in terms of what is and isn’t a clear and obvious error.”
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He then admitted that it was a mistake to not recommend a review, explaining: “We didn’t recommend a review. We should have done. We acknowledge that as an error, which, of course, was disappointing.
“We took the learning from that, obviously, to try and ensure going forward that type of error doesn’t happen again.”
The decision has left fans fuming and they took to social media to share their reactions to Webb’s explanations.
One said: “That VAR/Ref audio is incredible on that Onana decision on the opening weekend. Howard Webb said that VAR overthought it and it was a huge error hence the apology…”
Whilst another added: “It’s an absolute disgrace and they are about as incompetent as I assumed. This hasn’t cleared anything up.”
A third commented: “My word this is 100x more inept than I would’ve imagined. The ref and VAR have no clue what they’re doing here.”
The Onana incident was just one of the decisions that were reviewed by Webb and the Premier League.
They also discussed incidents including Kai Havertz overturned penalty against Man United and Virgil Van Dijk’s red card against Newcastle.
Webb agreed with the officials in concern to both the situations and believed that the correct decisions were made.
He did however admit to another mistake by the referees already this season.
Nathan Ake’s goal vs Fulham at the weekend had been a contentious subject with many fans claiming that it should’ve been disallowed for offside.
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And it would seem they were correct in their frustrations as Webb admitted he also thought it was a mistake to award the goal.
Speaking on the incident he said: “Unfortunately, it wasn’t identified on the day, and, of course, the learning from this one will also be shared amongst all of our group because we’re always looking to do better each and every week, and this was an error.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
