Since Howard Webb took charge of English referees in 2022 a Key Match Incidents panel has been meeting after each round to review officiating. BBC Sport were given access to the panel\u2019s findings from the 2025\/26 season, which record 25 VAR errors, seven more than last season.<\/p>\n
The KMI log is clear that these incidents are those which met the \u201cclear and obvious\u201d threshold that Stockley Park should have identified. Working on the assumption that every penalty that should have been awarded would have been converted, the panel\u2019s list changes how results would have stacked up. Arsenal benefit most: the Gunners won four points as a consequence of VAR errors. Manchester City\u2019s points total was not altered in the panel\u2019s reconstruction, though City were affected by individual incidents during the campaign.<\/p>\n
Phil Foden was denied a clear penalty in a 2\u20131 defeat to Newcastle in November, an episode Pep Guardiola would later criticise. The KMI panel judged that complaint to be justified, but City also gained from a missed call in May when Bernardo Silva escaped giving away a penalty for going all WWE on Merlin R\u00f6hl.<\/p>\n
Manchester United\u2019s final tally includes two points that the panel says were won thanks to a favourable decision which allowed Bryan Mbeumo to handle the ball before Matheus Cunha found the net in a 3\u20132 win over Nottingham Forest at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
Arne Slot spent much of the campaign vocal about perceived bias. \u201cIf there\u2019s a VAR intervention or if there\u2019s something that could be left or right [50-50] then the decision goes against us,\u201d the Dutch boss moaned after Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko\u2019s controversial strike for United was allowed in May. The KMI panel did not deem \u0160e\u0161ko\u2019s goal to meet the threshold of an error because no conclusive footage could be found.<\/p>\n
Liverpool\u2019s sole KMI-listed mistake came on the opening day when Marcos Senesi was not sent off for Bournemouth after handling the ball; Liverpool won that match 4\u20132. Three of Arsenal\u2019s eight 1\u20130 wins were aided by VAR mistakes, including Viktor Gy\u00f6keres\u2019s penalty against Everton at Hill Dickinson, where Everton should have had a spot kick for William Saliba\u2019s swipe. David Moyes declined to elaborate after that game. \u201cI\u2019d like to,\u201d Moyes shrugged, \u201cbut I\u2019d probably be fined.\u201d Fabian H\u00fcrzeler also protested after Brighton\u2019s loss to Arsenal when Gabriel Martinelli escaped punishment for a tug on Mats Wieffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KMI lists 25 VAR mistakes in 2025\/26. Arsenal gained four points; title trimmed to goal difference .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,192,172],"tags":[1505,1162,260],"class_list":["post-14122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-analytics","tag-bryan-mbeumo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}