Lee Mason has not been selected for VAR duty for the next round of Premier League fixtures following his latest contentious performance.
In November, Mason was in the seat at Stockley Park during Nottingham Forest’s controversial draw with Brentford. The Reds had three penalty appeals turned down, only to see Brentford given a spot-kick for a similar level of contact in the box after Mason told on-field referee Andrew Marriner to look at the monitor. The injustice left Forest fans furious.
Mason was in the headlines for the wrong reasons again on Saturday as he failed to spot an offside in the build-up to Brentford’s equalising goal at Arsenal. It was a match-defining incident as the Bees put a dent in the Gunners’ title ambitions by securing a 1-1 draw.
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Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer at Professional Game Match Officials Limited, has contacted Arsenal to acknowledge and explain the error. Meanwhile, Mason’s name was absent from the appointments list published on the Premier League website today (Tuesday)
Mason has faced calls from former PGMOL general manager Keith Hackett to be sacked. Mason, who became a dedicated VAR at the start of last season following his retirement as a referee, did not investigate the play immediately leading to Brentford’s equaliser at the Emirates when Christian Norgaard appeared to be in an offside position before he hooked the ball across goal for Ivan Toney to score. He had instead checked and cleared a passage of play immediately preceding that.
It is not the first time Mason has been dropped, having been stood down in September after wrongly disallowing a Newcastle goal for a foul in a match against Crystal Palace.
Mason adjudged that Magpies forward Joe Willock had fouled Palace goalkeeper Vicente Guaita, when replays indicated Willock had been shoved into Guaita by Palace defender Tyrick Mitchell.
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