Premier League confirm six 'game-changing' VAR decisions were wrong this season

The Premier League have confirmed that SIX incidents in games featured the wrong decision in the first half of the season.

After an entertaining World Cup, Premier League football returns on Boxing Day. 26 December will make the first matchday for Premier League referee Howard Webb, who recently started a role as the first chief refereeing officer with the Professional Game Match Officials Board.

Webb, who took charge of the 2010 World Cup final, is tasked with improving the standard of refereeing on these shores after working in Saudi Arabia and the United States and Canada.

The use of VAR is central to his plans and according to Martin Lipton from The Sun, Premier League chiefs accept there were six wrong calls.

A recently introduced “key match incident panel”, featuring three former players as well as representatives from the league and PGMOL, conducted a thorough study of decisions made so far.

They concluded that in terms of VAR, a total of 42 interventions were correct. However, at the same time, they think there were six occasions where the on-field decision was incorrect and should have been changed.

For starters, it's accepted that Cristian Romero's hairpull on Marc Cucurella on the corner where Harry Kane scored a dramatic equaliser for Spurs against Chelsea, should have been disallowed.

Another controversial call was Gabriel Martinelli seeing a goal chalked off against Manchester United for what was deemed to be a foul from Martin Odegaard on Christian Eriksen in the build-up.

Those high up believe the strike, which would have put Arsenal 1-0 up at Old Trafford, should have stood.

There was disbelief in November when Trent Alexander-Arnold's challenge on Ryan Sessegnon inside the area when unpunished in Spurs' 2-1 defeat to Liverpool, with that decision viewed as incorrect.

Image: Alamy

Similar calls where Maxwell Cornet's late leveller for West Ham against Chelsea and Tyrick Mitchell's own goal against Newcastle were chalked off inexplicable also made the list of errors.

It was also ruled that Douglas Luiz's headbutt on Aleksandar Mitrovic in Steven Gerrard's final game in charge of Aston Villa should not have bene a red card.

Webb is believed to be keen on less involvement from VAR for when decisions are not "clear and obvious" - the two words frequently used in regards to the technology.

Topics: Premier League, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea

Josh Lawless

Josh is a sports journalist who specialises in football and wrestling. He has been published by Curzon Ashton FC, Late Tackle, Manchester City FC, The Mirror, Read Man City and Manchester Evening News. He provides coverage of professional wrestling and has interviewed some of the biggest names in the field - including the first UK interview with The Hardy Boyz after their return to WWE. He has never sported a pair of Lonsdale Slip-ons, contrary to reports.

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