Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou says it would be a “dereliction” of duty to vilify VAR Darren England for the mistake which cost Liverpool the opening goal in their defeat in north London last weekend.
Luis Diaz's strike was incorrectly flagged offside and video assistant referee England failed to overturn the decision on review, after mistakenly believing the goal had been awarded by the on-field officials.
Liverpool went on to lose 2-1 and their head coach, Jurgen Klopp, has called for the game to be replayed.
England has been stood down from Premier League duty and will reportedly not officiate any Liverpool matches for the remainder of the campaign.
Referees’ body, the PGMOL, has conducted a full review of the incident and has since said they will improve communication between the on-field officials and VARs.
Postecoglou says it is inevitable that officials, like players and managers, will make mistakes and believes the protocols, not England, are to blame for the error.
Postecoglou said: “The same way managers and players make mistakes, referees will at times make mistakes.
“When I listened to that audio, saying 'check complete', someone obviously thought it was a good way of finalising things and it's worked up until now.
“I would have thought the logical thing is to say 'goal for Liverpool' and there isn't anything [wrong], but I'm saying that with the ignorance of not knowing how it's truly set up. When listening to that you probably think there's better ways of communicating a clear decision in such a big situation.
“I hope that's what they're addressing, not the individual that made the mistake. I think that's a dereliction of the game.
“That's like me hanging out a player to dry just because he made a mistake. My role is to go in and help that player to improve not say: ‘Now you're never playing again’.”
Klopp on Wednesday said he believed a replay would be fair, but insisted he was speaking as a football fan rather than Liverpool boss. Postecoglou was asked if he would have let the Reds walk the ball into the net if he had been told about the mistake at the time.
“I wouldn't make a decision that could potentially send your club down, on the back of what my beliefs are,” he replied.
“In that moment, if somebody could tell me that they would explain everything that went on within the prism of 30 seconds that I have to make a decision... wasn't going to happen.
“It's different if it's something clear but it's quite obvious it was a bad error, a bad mistake, like I said through lack of communication. But it wasn't something that was easily explainable, because if it was I would assume there would have been more uproar during the game than there was.”
Postecoglou added: “It became clear it wasn't an integrity issue, it wasn't a misappropriation of the law, it was an error in communication, a mistake, a mistake which cost Liverpool. I get that it's an unusual one in that it's never happened before.
“But at the same time we're in a new space anyway with technology where I think they'll be a lot of firsts with the way we deal with these things.
“My view is we want an error-less, faultless system which I don't think exists and will never exist unless we want to turn our game into other codes where the event goes for four hours and we're explaining every decision.”
