VAR officials Darren England and Daniel Cook will return to Premier League duty this weekend following their error in last month’s fixture between Tottenham and Liverpool.
England and Cook were the VAR and VAR assistant respectively when Liverpool forward Luis Diaz’s goal was incorrectly ruled out for offside against Tottenham.
Both officials were stood down the following week, but England will be back as the fourth official for Brentford’s home game against Burnley on Saturday and Cook will return as assistant referee for Sheffield United’s match against Manchester United, live on Sky Sports.
Miscommunication between VAR England and referee Simon Hooper led to Diaz’s goal being wrongly ruled out on September 30.
England mistakenly believed the on-field decision had been to award the goal, leading him to tell Hooper that the check was complete.
After England and Cook were alerted to their mistake by the replay operator when the goal wasn’t awarded, they repeatedly said they could not intervene as the game had restarted.
“Can’t do anything,” said England as the replay operator asked for the game to be stopped.
Hooper is the designated VAR for Newcastle’s home game against Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Speaking in the second episode of Match Officials: Mic’d Up, PGMOL chief Howard Webb explained why VAR failed to rectify the clear mistake.
According to Webb, England “lost sight of what the on-field decision was” after going through his processes “pretty quickly”. The referees’ chief insists efficiency is key but “not at the sacrifice of accuracy”.
Webb also confirmed that the laws of the game, as set out by FIFA and IFAB, did not allow the officials to intervene and remedy the mistake, although England and Cook did ask themselves that question “when the penny dropped”.
Webb said: “At that point they considered whether they could intervene to stop the game but they recognised that the laws of the game, set by FIFA and the IFAB, doesn’t allow that. There’s obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game about how we use VAR to make sure it is delivered consistently throughout every league in the world. And it doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances. As such they decided not to intervene.
“But I understand why that question was asked and I know that IFAB are, in fact before this incident even happened, I knew that they were going to do a full review of the laws of the game relating to the use of VAR.”
Michael Oliver, who was the fourth official at Tottenham vs Liverpool, will referee Manchester United’s visit to Bramall Lane on Saturday.
He opted not to send off Manchester City’s Mateo Kovacic for a challenge on Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard in the final round of fixtures before the international break, with Webb later admitting the Croatian midfielder was “fortunate” to stay on the pitch.