Pep Guardiola used the aftermath of Tuesday\u2019s Carabao Cup semifinal victory over Newcastle United to air a long-standing grievance with VAR decisions that, in his view, have accumulated across several matches. Rayan Cherki would belatedly establish a 2\u20130 lead for the visitors to take into the second leg of the tie at the Etihad Stadium next month, giving Guardiola the platform to set out his complaints.<\/p>\n
City\u2019s manager returned repeatedly to the same themes during a six-minute critique of refereeing and VAR. He defended his players and stressed resilience: \u201cWe know how it works and that will make us stronger,\u201d he told Sky Sports. \u201cI\u2019ve said it many times to the team, it is always about that. It\u2019s in that situation how we react and how we compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola singled out the disallowed second-half goal by Antoine Semenyo, which was awarded on the pitch but overturned by VAR Stuart Attwell on offside lines involving Haaland. The decision required referee Chris Kavanagh to review a pitch-side image after VAR judged Haaland to have been actively interfering with Malick Thiaw\u2019s attempt to clear the effort. Guardiola asked why the decision had to be referred: \u201cFour officials and VAR were not able to take the decision, they had to go to the referee,\u201d he said, later adding with sarcasm: \u201cToday, the line was perfect. Millimetres.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also recycled incidents from earlier in the season on Tyneside and the Premier League meeting with Newcastle, describing those moments as missed punishments, including what he called \u201ctwo insane penalties.\u201d \u201cIn the league game here, 60 minutes and 20 minutes, take a look,\u201d Guardiola said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why in the Premier League game with [Fabian] Sch\u00e4r on Phil [Foden] why VAR didn\u2019t say anything. Then the penalty with [J\u00e9r\u00e9my] Doku and Thiaw.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guardiola referenced last season\u2019s FA Cup final as part of his wider critique: \u201cDid you review the FA Cup final last season? When [Dean] Henderson touched the ball outside the box. Did I say anything?\u201d He urged those responsible for officiating to answer for decisions: \u201cAsk them. Who is the boss of the referees? Ask him [Howard Webb]. It\u2019s the semifinals. We play for a lot to reach the finals. It will make us stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reaction to VAR decisions has also drawn outside comment, with ITV pundit Ian Wright calling one contentious FA Cup ruling \u201cabsolutely pathetic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guardiola warned VAR errors have accumulated across five incidents, from FA Cup final, Newcastle tie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,238],"tags":[801,1066],"class_list":["post-5965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carabao-cup","category-manchester-city","tag-antoine-semenyo","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965","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=5965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}