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Gabriel Martinelli’s disallowed goal in Arsenal’s loss to Manchester United has been revealed to be one of six VAR errors in the first half of the season.
THE LOWDOWN: QUESTIONABLE DECISION
Since its introduction to football, the Video Assistant Referee has been heavily criticized for the way it has affected football. While it has been of great help to referees in making the right call, the human element has come in, making some of its calls even worse for the affected clubs.
However, it is constantly undergoing changes and improvements with the aim of making it as foolproof as possible.
One of the ways is by reviewing VAR calls at certain points in the season and when the Premier League did their review of the 48 VAR calls made in the first half of the season, six were deemed to be errors.
That is a good margin of error, but unfortunately for Arsenal, one of those errors was at their expense.
Martinelli raced on to a through ball and thought he had opened the scoring for Arsenal in the 12th minute of their match against Manchester United at Old Trafford in September, only for VAR Lee Mason to tell referee Paul Tierney to disallow the goal because of a foul by Martin Ødegaard.
THE LATEST: THREE VALUABLE POINTS LOST
Arsenal would go on to lose that game 3-1 and it would be their only league loss this season, which contributed to them being only five points ahead at the top of the table.
Both Ødegaard and Mikel Arteta criticized the decision at the time.
Arteta said: “It’s a lack of consistency. What is soft? Last week, they [Aston Villa] got a goal when there’s a foul on Aaron (Ramsdale), but it’s soft and it’s not a foul.
“Then there’s a penalty on Bukayo [Saka, by Tyrone Mings] but it’s soft and not a penalty. Today this is a foul.
“There were some strong tackles and no yellow cards because the threshold is low because it’s a big game. It’s really difficult to accept.”
Odegaard added: “In my opinion, it’s never a foul. The referee sees it and plays play on.
“It’s a soft challenge and for VAR to come in it has to be clear and obvious. That’s been said a lot of times.
“On the camera, you can always make it look a little bit worse, but, for me, that was never a foul so it’s frustrating.”
THE VERDICT: IT HAPPENS
It is even more difficult to accept that loss to Manchester United, in the wake of the latest development. That goal could have changed the whole dynamics of the game and we could have easily been unbeaten up until this point.
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink branded the decision as ‘ridiculous’ at the time and it appears he was right. Things like this happen in football though but hopefully nothing too costly will see Arsenal on the receiving end come the second half of the season.
