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The controversies surrounding VAR (Video Assistant Referee) rages on as some controversial decisions were made in Saturday’s EPL games.
Today we will be reviewing four of these decisions to determine if they were accurate or wrong.
Aston Villa vs Manchester City
The first decision we will be looking at is the supposed offside that denied Aston Villa a victory in their game against Manchester City, the Citizens had a difficult game away at Villa Park as they could only secure a point.
With the game level at 1-1 Coutinho scored an amazing goal in the 80th minute but a VAR review judged the goal to be offside, it is worthy to note that both the referee and linesman didn’t see the offside.
A VAR review then judged Coutinho to be offside, a look at the images from the incident indicates a clear and biased VAR decision.
As we can see from the above photo Coutinho couldn’t have been offside as he was behind a Manchester City defender when the ball was passed to him.
VERDICT: Wrong VAR decision
Everton vs Liverpool
The second decision we will be reviewing today came in the Liverpool vs Everton game, the game ended in a 0-0 draw but the toffees had a goal cancelled for offside.
The above photos show the incident, Conor Coady scored the goal after receiving a pass from his teammate, it is clear Coady was onside as he and Van Dijk were standing in the same line while the ball was ahead of them and the feet of two other players was also ahead of Van Dijk and Coady.
To clarify this decision I have pulled out the above snippet from the updated 2022/23 laws of game.
“It states that a player is in an offside position if any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the opponents goal line than the ball and the second last opponent”
We can see from the photos of the incident that the feet of a Liverpool and another Everton player was ahead of Conor Coady.
This incident shouldn’t have been an offside according to the laws of the game.
VERDICT: Wrong VAR decision
Everton vs Liverpool
The third decision in view also happened in the Liverpool vs Everton game, Van Dijk lunged into what can be perceived as a dangerous tackle on Onana.
This incident is a very tricky one because VAR didn’t review it and that’s because there wasn’t a red card decision to be made.
The laws of the game isn’t very straight for when it comes to the endangerment of another player, the referee will most certainly make a decision based on his view of the incident.
From the photos of the incident it can be said that it was a dangerous tackle that could hurt Onana, but a more technical view would observe that Van Dijk’s foot wasn’t high off the ground and he didn’t catch Onana in an area that would have hurt him, in my opinion had Van Dijk’s foot moved a couple of inches into Onana’s shin area a red card would have been the right decision to make.
VERDICT: Right VAR decision
West Ham vs Chelsea
Chelsea beat West Ham 2-1 but the game could easily have ended in a 2-2 draw, the Hammers equalized late on in the game but a VAR review detected a foul in the running to the goal.
Edouard Mendy tried catching a fairly easy ball but as he went down for the catch Jarod Bowen came in full speed and disrupted Edouard Mendy’s ability to catch the ball.
Bowen also made significant contact with Edouard Mendy’s arm and a split seconds was what prevented Bowen from catching Mendy in all the wrong places.
VERDICT: Right VAR decision
There is still a long way to go for VAR, some decisions are proving brilliant while other continue to be terrible, let me know your thoughts on these decisions in the comments section.
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