An independent review panel has been looking at a bunch of calls made by VAR, and according to ESPN, Newcastle are one of a handful of teams who can rightly feel aggrieved as the panel identified six costly decisions VAR got wrong.
The panel – which included three former players and representatives from the Premier League and referee’s body PGMOL, highlighted six mistakes from 48 overturned decisions from Premier League games in the first half of the season before the World Cup break.
I’m sure if you asked Newcastle fans they could rhyme of six of their own that just affected Newcastle, but the panel has chosen one Newcastle incident in particular that they are sure the officals got wrong on the day – The cancellation of the Tyrick Mitchell own goal against Crystal Palace.
That was the one where Mitchell lined up a snooker-like shot using himself as the cue ball, Joe Willock as the red and Vincente Guaita as the pocket. He charged into the back of Willock sending him flying into Guaita while the ball cannoned off Mitchell and went into the net, but the goal was ruled out by the referee and VAR for a foul on the ‘keeper by Willock. That was despite the fact that literally everybody else who reviewed that footage could see that the only reason Willock was anywhere near Guaita was because of Mitchell’s thunderous clash into Willock’s back.
The review panel concluded that the goal should have stood – no duh. If the goal had to be ruled out, the only other realistic outcome was a penalty, however, the officials on the day decided that Newcastle should get nothing from that incident and as such the game ended in a draw and Newcastle were robbed of two points.
Other decisions included: The decision to disallow a late equaliser for West Ham away at Chelsea, and an opening goal for Arsenal in their eventual defeat at Manchester United. These incidents took place over the same weekend as our disallowed goal against Palace. A real banner weekend for VAR.
The other three are the penalisation of Lucas Digne for handball in a 3-1 defeat for Aston Villa at Palace in August with the score at 1-1, a red card for Douglas Luiz in Villa’s 3-0 defeat at Fulham when they were just one goal behind, and Dean Henderson’s concession of a penalty in Nottingham Forest’s 2-2 with Brentford when they were 1-0 ahead. (via The Chronicle)