Mark Clattenburg has done what not many referees normally do and lambasted the officials in charge of Liverpool’s game against Tottenham Hotspur but after a gaff so bad as we saw for Luis Diaz’s disallowed goal – it’s hard for anyone to back what happened.
Writing for the Daily Mail, the former Premier League referee said: ‘The PGMOL brought in Phil Bentham last year to improve communications between the match officials because of his background in rugby league.
‘As a former TMO [television match official], his every word was broadcast live, and Howard Webb has been striving for his Premier League officials to make their messages clear and concise.
‘But there was a total breakdown in basic communication at Tottenham on Saturday. Assistant Adrian Holmes should have been shouting ‘offside, offside’ after raising his flag against Luis Diaz.
‘Referee Simon Hooper should have been relaying that to the players, too. All this should have been picked up by their earpieces and heard by VAR Darren England and his assistant Dan Cook at Stockley Park’.
It seems as though the 48-year-old thinks that because the linesman Adrian Holmes wasn’t making it clear enough that he had flagged for offside, this could be where the confusion around Darren England’s catastrophic decision stemmed from.
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However, the presence of Simon Hooper on the pitch and Dan Cook in the VAR room should mean that this wrongly given decision never happens.
Quite how a referee, two linesmen, a fourth official and two VAR cannot see that an error was made is almost incomprehensible – surely one of them should have been able to add some clarity on the matter.
Everything was done so quickly that when panic did set in, it was too late to rectify the error but that’s just where another issue lies, as there should be room for common sense on this matter.
Although VAR is not allowed to stop the game again after it has been restarted, when what appears to be a genuine mistake does occur like we saw against Spurs then someone should step in to make sure justice is served.
So what if they would have been disciplined for stopping the game again – this would have all been much easier to swallow if anyone in a position of power of the game had made the right call and fixed a monumental error.
Lazy officials who have become so used to the VAR default that they regularly sit on their hands when any contentious call is given knowing that VAR will get them out of a hole and any blame falls on Stockley. Hooper, the referee had already made errors with his call to give Jota a yellow for a trip when in fact the Spurs player fell over his own feet. No wonder our refs don’t get invited to World Cup games. They are not good enough but apparently they are O.K. to officiate in Saudi two days before a top of the table clash. That’s down to Howard Webb allowing them to take the Kings Shilling. Snouts in the trough anyone ?
The incident in the Liverpool games is *exactly* why the linesmen/assistant refs are supposed to delay putting their flag up until after the play is finished. If that had happened on Sunday, the whole clusterf*#€ would have been avoided
If all VAR wrongs were righted this season Spurs would be top of the Premiership get over it
Top of the league…on what planet??,
That’s a cracking joke 😂😂😂
VAR SHOULD BE SCRAPPED OFF FROM PREMIER LEAGUE ONCE