Howard Webb has acknowledged a clear error after a Fulham goal was disallowed during Saturday\u2019s 2\u20130 defeat to Chelsea. The outcome stood and Chelsea went on to win, but the decision sparked immediate criticism and prompted action from PGMOL.<\/p>\n
PGMOL removed the VAR official Michael Salisbury from the same role for Sunday\u2019s Liverpool v Arsenal fixture. Webb addressed the incident on Match Officials Mic’d Up and said the VAR protocol in place was not applied correctly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t controversial, it was wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Webb reiterated the principles that guide VAR use in the Premier League and how officials are instructed to operate at a high threshold for intervention. He emphasised that on-field decisions should normally stand unless the evidence is very clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve established some principles in terms of how we officiate in the\u00a0Premier League\u00a0and how we use VAR. They sit around a high threshold for penalising contact, aiding the flow, rhythm and tempo of the game. We\u2019ve also established a high bar for intervention with VAR.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, if situations are not clearly wrong and the referee has made a call on the field, that call will stand or at least should stand. That\u2019s the message we give to all of our VARs, particularly when we come to taking away goals that are obviously a crucial moment in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should only be taking goals away when the evidence is very clear that\u2019s the only thing we can do and that\u2019s the guidance we give to our officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this situation, that guidance wasn\u2019t followed properly. There was a misjudgement by the officials involved in this situation about how that contact happened between Muniz and Chalobah. The officials got super-focused on that contact, without looking at the full context of how it happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happens when Muniz is in possession of the ball, controls the ball, turns naturally and brings his foot down on to Chalobah, who\u2019s moved his foot into a space which the Fulham player has the right to put his foot into in that normal way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disallowed Fulham effort and Webb\u2019s admission generated anger in the public debate. Premier League figure Alan Shearer expressed his frustration on The Rest Is Football, exclaiming: \u201cWhat the f— are they thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Howard Webb admits VAR guidance was not followed after Michael Salisbury stood down by PGMOL. on Sat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,713,172],"tags":[59,903],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-fulham","category-epl","tag-featured","tag-match-officials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","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=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}