Arne Slot has called out the inexplicable inconsistency of refereeing standards in the Premier League after Liverpool’s galling 3-0 defeat on Sunday.
Although the Reds were thoroughly outclassed by Manchester City, they had legitimate grievances over two first-half decisions in particular – a contentious penalty awarded for an apparent foul by Giorgi Mamardashvili, and a goal for Virgil van Dijk ruled out because Andy Robertson was offside and deemed to be interfering with play.
That was despite the Scottish left-back not impeding Gianluigi Donnarumma’s sight of the ball in any way, and even an ardent Man United cheerleader in Gary Neville was incredulous over the goal being disallowed.
Slot exposes laughable inconsistency from Kavanagh
Speaking to Sky Sports after the match, Slot pointed to the stoppage-time winner from John Stones against Wolves last season that Chris Kavanagh (today’s referee) allowed to stand despite Bernardo Silva being offside and clearly obstructing Jose Sa.
The Liverpool head coach stated: “I think it’s obvious and clear that the wrong decision has been made, at least in my opinion, because [Robertson] didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do.
“Immediately after the game someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed City against Wolves last season. It took the linesman 13 seconds to raise his flag to say it’s offside, so there was clearly communication.
“That could have influenced the game in a positive way for us because in the first half we were so poor.
“We would have been lucky going 1-0 down at half-time, let alone if it was 1-1 or 2-1 down. It has been an influential decision, which is not to say that we then would have had a result over here because you cannot predict how the second half would have gone.”
Explain that one please, Mr Kavanagh…
Slot’s answer was spot-on. He was honest enough to acknowledge that Liverpool fully deserved to lose, while not giving the officials a free pass over a shambolic decision which could potentially have altered the course of the game, as Van Dijk would’ve equalised had the goal stood.
How Kavanagh could deem that Silva wasn’t obstructing Sa at Molineux last year while penalising Robertson for his ‘interference’ on Donnarumma today is simply mind-boggling, and it’s that inconsistency which utterly infuriates football fans in this country.
PGMOL chief Howard Webb should be compelled to give a thorough explanation over it, and privately he won’t be thanking the officials at the Etihad Stadium this evening over some of the decisions which went against the Reds.
In addition, Mark Goldbridge rightly called out VAR Michael Oliver over the Mamardashvili/Doku penalty incident, which was far less severe than that the Belgian got away with on Alexis Mac Allister in March 2024.
Liverpool would probably have still lost today even if Van Dijk’s goal was given, such was the gulf between the two teams, but had that been allowed to stand and parity was restored, it might’ve altered the course of the match.
The Reds have to be unforgiving in analysing their own performance, but the officials certainly didn’t help either.
Is it time to have an additional VAR sytsem to police VAR and Refereeing decisions….and then another system to review the review of the VAR and Ref? Ditch VAR and impose a swift appeals process PGMOL – to redress inexcusable errors made by Refs like Kavanagh – by imposing sanctions on the Refs
After all, poor managers get the boot as do poor players
[pun intended]
A kind of multiple layered bureaucracy that can arrive at swift, fair and accurate decisions ?
I get the joke btw.
Despite the “plays” in EPL, today’s Brentford v Newcastle game was an appalling watch with the repeated penalty box “simulations”.
Publicly censuring refs ? It takes a long time to train refs to the quality they are right now.
We’d quickly end up with nobody willing to take the job on.
V.A.R. is still better than what we had, we the fans, just need the politics being played with it removed and some common sense applied.
How about more honest players and managers, competent standardised adjudication, independent from which owner’s “paying the most money” to win ? Sounds like something Ai could help with maybe ?
PGMOL need to stop allowing refs to referee or be on VAR for big clubs in their vicinity, whoever they profess to support. We were robbed again today by ref and VAR.
Why does this happens with certain refs? Why is Anthony Taylor (not today but in general) allowed to ref Liverpool games after so many mistakes against Liverpool? I don’t understand how Salah was flagged offside all the time and Marmoush has been very clearly offside but never flagged or even checked.
The refs think us fans don’t know the rules and will just believe what they say.
That was also my thought, on one side the linesman keep raising his flag for a marginal offside but on the other side the player is left to continue until the outcome is achieved