Former Premier League winner Chris Sutton has slammed the decision not to disallow Manchester United’s opener against Liverpool on Sunday.
Reds attacker Divock Origi was clearly fouled by Victor Lindelof in the build up to Marcus Rashford’s opening goal, but despite VAR taking a look at the strike, the decision to award the goal was upheld.
Sutton was left fuming: “What is ‘clear and obvious’ then?,” he wrote in his Daily Mail column. “Do you have to smack someone with a baseball bat? Get them in a headlock? Kung-fu kick him? Crikey.
“This is getting silly now. It’s either a foul or it’s not, and this challenge by Victor Lindelof on Divock Origi was definitely a foul. This whole ‘clear and obvious’ excuse has become a cop out. This was a huge moment in a huge match, and the officials got it wrong for me. It is incidents such as this that make me lose faith in VAR.”
OPINION
Sutton is absolutely spot on, here, which can’t always be said with a straight face. The referees seem to be taking whatever the VAR officials back at Stockley Park say as gospel, with complete reluctance to go and take a look at incidents themselves on the touch-side monitor. That’s what it’s there for, yet no referee seems to be using it. They just accept whatever the VAR boys tell them, rather than looking at it themselves and trusting their own judgement. Martin Atkinson wasn’t in a position to see the foul on Origi and so he correctly let the play continue and United obviously went on to score from it. However, VAR should have pulled him up for the foul and told him not to award the goal. At the very least they should have said to Atkinson ‘go and have a look at that one, Martin, we’re not sure’. Even if they didn’t, he should have thought about it himself, because clearly he wasn’t sure about the incident in real time. Clearly something needs to change with VAR, that’s for sure.
