With five games played in the 2026\/27 season, the Premier League has already been dragged into a series of officiating disputes despite hopes of a lighter touch. Howard Webb has issued an apology that was quickly rejected, and further explanations are still being awaited across the division.<\/p>\n
Removing VAR from the picture changes the table in several places, but Manchester United remain the major talking point. Erling Haaland\u2019s winner in the Manchester derby should not have stood, according to Webb\u2019s own acknowledgement, after officials became caught in what he described as \u201ctunnel vision.\u201d The issue centred on Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s movement in front of Lisandro Mart\u00ednez, while VAR Matt Donohue focused on whether Haaland was onside when he turned the ball in past Senne Lammens.<\/p>\n
Even so, United would still sit 12th with the additional point, showing that the decision was costly without transforming their wider position.<\/p>\n
At the top, Arsenal would move clear of the rest on 12 points, with Brentford and Manchester City next on 11. Liverpool would also be better off overall, although their draw in this version of the table follows the denied goal against Nottingham Forest when Florian Wirtz\u2019s effort was ruled out for offside.<\/p>\n
Forest are one of the biggest beneficiaries of the no-VAR table. Oliver Glasner\u2019s side would climb to 10th, helped by the sense that they have been denied three points in separate incidents. Neco Williams had a goal disallowed against Tottenham Hotspur after an alleged handball in a goal-line scramble with Sandro Tonali, and that decision came without any definitive camera angle proving the offence. Williams later posted: \u201cClear and obvious they say,\u201d while Glasner added after the Coventry City match: \u201cOf course I have thoughts but I don\u2019t want to speak about it again,\u201d after Igor Jesus was judged to have tripped Caleb Yirenkyi before scoring.<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s own frustration also featured in the aftermath of the derby. He said: \u201cI thought there was maybe someone who had flicked it, I don\u2019t normally go offside,\u201d and added: \u201cI talked to [referee] Michael Oliver and I told him I took it personal that he thought I went offside.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record suggests otherwise. As the draft notes, Haaland has only been correctly flagged offside once this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The table shifts without VAR, but United, Forest and Haaland remain central to the early debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,179,298,172,2024],"tags":[1836,1162,59],"class_list":["post-20203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","category-nottingham-forest","category-epl","category-refereeing","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20203","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=20203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}