Daily Mail

THAT IS A SCANDAL! VAR SHOULD HAVE STEPPED IN

- MARK CLATTENBUR­G the official line

VAR should have intervened and awarded Sheffield United a goal after Hawk-Eye malfunctio­ned and failed to detect Aston Villa goalkeeper Orjan Nyland carrying the ball over the line. Officials need to stop acting like robots and take ownership because a human being has to make the final decision, although I attach no blame to referee Michael Oliver on this. Rather, if the goal-line technology has clearly failed, then VAR referee Paul Tierney needs to tell Oliver: ‘Stop, it was a goal.’ Or, at the very least, they should pause and take a closer look at all available angles — you then quickly realise it’s a goal. As for Hawk-Eye, I find the Premier League explanatio­n bizarre. They say the cameras were ‘occluded by the goalkeeper, defender and goalpost’. But they weren’t, we could clearly see the ball. When Hawk-Eye was introduced, we, as referees, were told it was foolproof and saw through everything. So this explanatio­n does not add up. Sportsmail has been told the technology was working throughout the game and that Oliver’s watch was even indicating ‘goal’ during halftime when substitute­s were shooting into the net. So something has gone badly wrong. Whatever the reason, this was still avoidable, if only VAR had done its job and intervened.

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