{"id":848745,"date":"2026-09-15T15:44:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/848745\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T15:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:44:36","slug":"referees-are-fallible-yes-but-the-manchester-derby-var-error-it-was-alarming-and-embarrassing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/848745\/","title":{"rendered":"Referees are fallible, yes. But the Manchester derby VAR error? It was alarming and embarrassing"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the opening weekend of this season, the Premier League trumpeted a record of 100 per cent accuracy in key decisions made by match officials.<\/p>\n

Across those first 10 games, it listed 21 key match incidents (KMIs), ranging from penalty appeals and potential red-card challenges to goals being double-checked for possible offside. The league\u2019s KMI panel agreed that the on-field officials had made correct decisions in 18 of the 21 cases \u2014 and that \u201cfollowing VAR intervention, 100 per cent of calls were deemed correct\u201d.<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t quite the case.<\/p>\n

The exception was an unsuccessful Brighton & Hove Albion penalty appeal in their 4-0 win against Aston Villa. Four of the five panel members felt Brighton should have been awarded a spot kick for a challenge by John McGinn on Ibrahim Osman<\/a>, which referee Peter Bankes missed. But the panel\u2019s majority verdict (three to two) was that, even if it should have been a penalty, it was not such a \u201cclear and obvious error\u201d that it merited a VAR intervention.<\/p>\n

It probably helped that Brighton were already four up \u2014 nobody was going to lose sleep over an incident in that context \u2014 but it was almost as blatant a foul as you are likely to see. That Bankes missed McGinn\u2019s lunge in real time was excusable, but what was bizarre was that one member of the KMI panel (made up each week of a Premier League representative, a refereeing representative and three \u201cindependent\u201d panellists, drawn from former players or managers) felt he had got it right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n John McGinn\u2019s unpunished challenge on Ibrahim Osman (Mike Hewitt\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Still, there is so often a grey area in these incidents. And there is a higher bar these days when it comes to VAR interventions for subjective decisions. It is why, even if four of them felt it should have been a penalty, three of the five members of the KMI panel felt VAR Matt Donohue was right to allow the on-pitch call to stand.<\/p>\n

There were a couple of similar incidents in week two.<\/p>\n

The KMI panel felt Sam Barrott was wrong to award Nottingham Forest a penalty at Liverpool for a challenge by Alisson on Neco Williams\u2026 but not so wildly that VAR Michael Oliver should have sent him to the pitchside screen. Likewise, Tony Harrington\u2019s failure to award Brentford a penalty at Leeds United after Jayden Bogle\u2019s challenge on Kevin Schade: wrong, said the KMI panel, but not a \u201cclear and obvious\u201d error.<\/p>\n

Some readers will bristle at such a contradiction, but it does at least come from a reasonable standpoint: that the threshold for VAR intervention should be high and that the \u201creferee\u2019s call\u201d should stand unless, in the VAR\u2019s opinion, a mistake is clear and obvious.<\/p>\n

All of which brings us to Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon and the biggest refereeing controversy of the new Premier League season.<\/p>\n

Manchester City deserved their victory over Manchester United<\/a>, but the only goal of the game, by Erling Haaland on the hour, should not have stood \u2014 not because of offside against the scorer, as was initially flagged by the referee\u2019s assistant, but against his team-mate Enzo Fernandez.<\/p>\n

It could have been one of those rare triumphs for VAR and semi-automated offside technology, which determined that Haaland, contrary to the impression given by television replays, had been played onside by United full-back Patrick Dorgu. But Fernandez was clearly offside and, by challenging for the ball, was interfering with play. The goal should have been disallowed and yet, after a VAR check lasting two and a half minutes, it was allowed to stand.<\/p>\n

By 9.15pm UK time on Sunday, Pro Ref, the professional referees\u2019 body in English football, was issuing a statement confirming that the VAR had not recognised \u201cthe likely impact\u201d of Fernandez\u2019s positioning and \u201cshould have recommended an on-field review\u201d. Pro Ref promised to review the incident fully and said contact had been made with United \u201cto acknowledge what we deem is an error of judgement<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta appears to be expecting a similar communication over the penalty Sunderland were awarded against his team at the Stadium of Light on Saturday. Arteta called that decision \u201cunacceptable\u201d<\/a>, feeling that Sunderland\u2019s Dan Ballard had fouled his player Ezri Konsa, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n

There is an understandable sense of bemusement at Arsenal over the initial explanation via the Premier League\u2019s Match Centre, which reported referee John Brooks as saying Konsa was \u201call over him (Ballard) at the near post, facing the wrong way\u201d, and VAR Stuart Attwell saying he was \u201chappy that it\u2019s a holding offence\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n A penalty was given against Arsenal\u2019s Ezri Konsa for this tangle with Dan Ballard of Sunderland (Michael Driver\/MI News\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But you only had to see Sky Sports News\u2019 Ref Watch feature on Monday morning to see former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher saying that such a penalty award would \u201cnever get overturned\u201d due to the higher threshold insisted upon. An incorrect decision? Many of us would say so. But a clear and obvious error that had to be overturned? That, at least, is open to debate.<\/p>\n

All in all, after a relatively smooth start to the season, it was a difficult weekend for match officials.<\/p>\n

That Sunderland-Arsenal game was played at a physical intensity that was thrilling for spectators but which looked extremely difficult to referee, hence the number of grievances on both sides. The Manchester derby was similar; even the relatively straightforward decision to send off City\u2019s Phil Foden for kicking out at Bruno Fernandes was controversial, given that his violent retaliation was first triggered and then exaggerated by the United captain. Even former United midfielder Nicky Butt, on his podcast, said it should have been either two red cards or none.<\/p>\n

But it is the controversial Haaland goal \u2014 or rather the officials\u2019 failure to recognise the part Fernandez played in it \u2014 that will rumble on. Why? Because it was not about a subjective decision. It was about a failure of process, which is presumed to be why the two VARs, Donohue and Blake Antrobus, have not been allocated any duties for a Premier League game this coming weekend.<\/p>\n

Gallagher\u2019s view in the Sky Sports studio the following morning was that the VARs must have found themselves so bogged down in studying a) whether Haaland was offside and b) whether Fernandez had touched the ball that they had \u201clost focus\u201d, specifically on the rule that states that \u201ca player will be penalised if they are clearly attempting to play a ball that is close when this action impacts on an opponent or on the ability of an opponent to play the ball\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mistakes happen. Goodness knows there were enough of them in the build-up to that goal: Dorgu lost the ball and then, in an attempt to atone for the error, ended up drifting from his position of left-back all the way to right-back, which is why United ended up outnumbered at the far post; no United midfielder showed the slightest interest in tracking the Fernandez run, even before he ended up in an offside position; Lisandro Martinez appeared to know Fernandez was offside but still found himself drawn to his Argentina team-mate in the middle of the goal at the last moment, fatally neglecting Haaland in a wider position.<\/p>\n

\"Erling<\/p>\n

\n Erling Haaland bundles the ball home against Manchester United (Michael Regan\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Anyone expecting perfect decisions from referees and their assistants \u2014 presiding over what has become a semi-contact sport, with ambiguous rules, played at high speed and frequently in the spirit of deception \u2014 should ask themselves just how often they see perfect decision-making from players.<\/p>\n

But while fallibility can and must be excused when it comes to referees and their assistants on the touchline, it is so much harder to accept from those in the VAR suite. To spend two and a half minutes studying that goal so forensically, and then seemingly lose sight of how Fernandez, from an offside position, distracted Martinez and goalkeeper Senne Lammens, is the worst of both worlds.<\/p>\n

If they had taken two and a half minutes just to confirm the offside decision, it might have been a hard sell. But to lose two and a half minutes to a VAR check, only to end up with what was so clearly the wrong decision? That is alarming. Coming in the Manchester derby, in front of a huge global television audience, doesn\u2019t mean that it mattered more than in any of the other 379 games in a Premier League season, but it certainly made it more embarrassing.<\/p>\n

How Carrick\u2019s tactical change made Manchester United worse<\/p>\n

Jon Mackenzie<\/p>\n

There is no doubt this one will be chalked up as an incorrect decision in the eyes of the KMI panel. The Foden\/Fernandes flashpoint? The Sunderland penalty against Arsenal (and indeed various other controversies at the Stadium of Light on Saturday)? Less likely, perhaps, not least because even a suboptimal outcome can be dressed up as a correct decision if three of the five panellists feel the VAR was right not to get involved.<\/p>\n

The Premier League is yet to publish its breakdown of those key match incidents from week three or beyond, but it listed 47 KMIs across the first two gameweeks. Eight of them were deemed to have been ruled wrongly by the on-field officials. Seven of these were either corrected on the advice of the VAR or (as in the case of the penalty awarded for Forest at Liverpool, or those not awarded for Brighton and Brentford against Villa and Leeds) considered marginal enough for the original decision to be upheld.<\/p>\n

The only exception in those first two rounds of games was a penalty that Arsenal were denied in stoppage time during their 1-0 win at Villa, when Ian Maatsen clattered Bruno Guimaraes. All five KMI panel members felt it was such a clear error that the VAR should have intervened. Had Arsenal not ended up winning that game regardless \u2014 and likewise at Sunderland, after the penalty awarded against them was saved brilliantly by David Raya \u2014 the fallout would have been greater.<\/p>\n

So it comes back to the percentages. How many mistakes are too many? One? Two? Let\u2019s not be unrealistic.<\/p>\n

But the whole point of VAR was to eliminate the relatively small number of serious mistakes \u2014 the howlers, as they are often referred to. There is already a feeling among many supporters that the time spent poring over marginal decisions \u2014 all those interminable stoppages for calls that are going to cause dissatisfaction, whatever the outcome \u2014 is far too much.<\/p>\n

That dissatisfaction is so much greater when time is spent analysing an incident in microscopic detail, only for a \u201cclear and obvious\u201d error to be upheld \u2014 or worse, in the case of Sunday, for a goal that had correctly been flagged offside to be wrongly given the green light.<\/p>\n

Everyone wants better decisions, particularly when their own team is on the wrong end of an injustice, minor or major. But at what cost to our enjoyment of the game?<\/p>\n

The VAR process outlined by former Premier League referee Graham Scott<\/a> is so painstaking that it leaves you wondering just how football ended up here. If it takes two minutes to get to the right decision, is it still the right decision? And what if, from time to time \u2014 like after those two and a half minutes at Old Trafford \u2014 the right decision ends up being replaced by the wrong one?<\/p>\n

Football was never meant to be like this. The offside rule certainly wasn\u2019t meant to come down to forensics. But the VAR system has turned it into that and, in doing so, has created a world in which human error \u2014 particularly from those with the technology at their disposal \u2014 seems so much less tolerable than it used to be.<\/p>\n

There are fewer mistakes, of course, but are they few enough to justify the disruptions, the delays and this endless pursuit of flawlessness in a sport that never seemed to have been designed with perfection in mind?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the opening weekend of this season, the Premier League trumpeted a record of 100 per cent accuracy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[463,4896,3788,1084,403,99],"class_list":["post-848745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-arsenal","tag-manchester-city","tag-manchester-united","tag-premier-league","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}