Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher has shared his views on the controversial decision to disallow West Ham United’s late goal at Chelsea.
Maxwel Cornet thought he scored his first Hammers goal since his summer arrival from Burnley when he fired the ball into the roof of the net to equalise in second half stoppage-time for the visitors at Stamford Bridge.
Michail Antonio had given West Ham the lead but Ben Chilwell and Kai Havertz put the Blues in front. Cornet’s goal would have made it 2-2 with just minutes remaining, but VAR official Jarred Gillett called referee Andrew Madley over to the monitor to check on a possible foul by Jarrod Bowen on goalkeeper Edouard Mendy in the build-up.
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The goal was disallowed and the decision sparked an uproar. Hammers boss David Moyes described it as “ridiculously bad”, whereas Match of the Day pundit and former Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer delivered a scathing verdict on the use of VAR, labelling it “disgraceful”.
It was not a good weekend for VAR overall, with a disallowed goal decision in Newcastle United’s draw at home against Crystal Palace also coming under fierce criticism. Referee body, PGMOL, accepted that the controversial decisions in both games were wrong.
Every week, former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher analyses the key refereeing decisions from the latest round of games on Sky Sports News’ Ref Watch. A lengthy discussion was had on West Ham’s goal that wasn’t and Gallagher believes referee Andrew Madley already had the best view of the incident.
“I didn’t think there was a foul on Saturday, I don’t think it is a foul now. I think it raises a number of issues. It became complicated I think because VAR got involved,” said Gallagher. “I say that because something that is really interesting about the whole scenario is that when it plays out, if you don’t watch the incident happening, watch the referee. The referee has got the best position he could have on the football field.
“He’s got everything in front of him. He can see the incident, he can see the clash, he sees Mendy. This is what he sees, he sees Bowen, he sees the goalkeeper on the floor. He’s got all the information. Yet when he went to the VAR (monitor), I understand that you can advise me to look at something from a different angle and I can make a different decision, but when he went to VAR he saw the same images, he saw the same angle. So I don’t know what changed for him.
“I think what happened is the VAR, for whatever reason, focused on the goalkeeper. [Mendy] is on the ground, he felt he was injured. He hasn’t got the feeling Andy Madeley had on the field. I think that’s what played a major part in this. He saw the goalkeeper on the ground and that took priority rather than the decision itself. I still come back to the fact that the referee had the best view, A; on the pitch, and B; on the monitor.”
When asked if the decision reached the bar of clear and obvious, Gallagher added: “That’s my point, I think the VAR focused on the goalkeeper. He felt he was injured and the law does say if the goalkeeper is injured, is genuinely injured on the floor, you have to stop the game in the penalty area.”
In the Premier League, a referee being called over to the VAR monitor is a sign that an initial decision is going to be overturned. Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock asked Gallagher why there was a reluctance for on-field referees to disagree with the VAR official and stick with their own decision.
Gallagher responded: “I think sometimes if you can show me my angle and I go ‘yeah, I thought that’, then you can show me a different angle and I can go, ‘ah, I wasn’t aware of that’. But this one, if I had to put a pin on the pitch of where I would want to be in that situation it would be exactly where the referee was. He got everything.
“What stunned me is they showed him the same angle. So, all that happened was that decision became a matter of opinion. One man’s opinion was a foul, one man’s wasn’t. In the end, they sided with the one man (whose opinion was a foul).”
Warnock asked Gallagher: “If you’d have been sent to the monitor there and you were the referee on the pitch and saw that again, would you have changed your mind?”
Gallagher responded: “No. I didn’t think it was a foul at the time. Based on where the referee was and what he saw and based on what he was shown on the screen, I can’t see what changed.”
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