Howard Webb says VAR should have awarded Forest a penalty against Everton | Video Assistant Referees (VAR)
Howard Webb has admitted that VAR should have intervened to recommend that Nottingham Forest be awarded a penalty during their Premier League match against Everton.
The admission comes 10 days after Forest created a furore by publicly posting criticizing the selection of video referee Stuart Attwellclaiming he was a Luton Town supporter and lacked due impartiality.
Speaking on the television show. Referees Mic'd Up, Webb said Attwell should have sent referee Anthony Taylor to the VAR monitor to review an incident in the 55th minute when Ashley Young tackled Callum Hudson-Odoi from behind in the penalty area.
Reviews of the audio footage between the referee and VAR showed that Taylor believed Young had successfully touched the ball on his tackle, which did not happen. Attwell, meanwhile, thought Young's challenge was part of an ongoing “fight,” rather than a foul.
“The referee rejects the penalty decision and the video assistant looks at it and asks if the non-award was a clear and obvious error and concludes that it was not,” Webb said. “He does not see a clear action that he considers worthy of intervention. “We would have preferred an intervention in this situation for the referee to go to the screen to make a judgment for himself and probably (we) would have had a different result if that had happened.”
Forest's public protest alleged that Attwell should have intervened in two additional penalty decisions that were not given by Taylor, but the Professional Game Match Officials Limited key match incidents panel found that Taylor's decisions had not been clear errors or obvious.
Explaining why these two incidents did not merit review, Webb said he felt they were “really subjective” decisions, and that the first decision was in line with PGMOL's approach to sanctions this season. “The first involved some contact from Ashley Young about Gio Reyna,” Webb said. “There was contact, the referee saw it. We didn't feel it was impactful enough to penalize…this was one where there was minimal contact.
“The second was a handball penalty situation. The ball hits Ashley Young's arm, it moves while he tries to close in a cross from close range and the referee considered that the arm was in a natural position and the VAR control completed it. “We thought both situations were in line with our expectations.”
Webb became PGMOL's director of refereeing in 2022 and has substantially increased levels of communication around refereeing decisions. But much of his public involvement has been dedicated to trying to calm controversies, most notably when Liverpool scored a legitimate goal against Tottenham. canceled by mistake by the VARDarren England.
To close your comments on the Everton In the Forest game, Webb noted that mistakes would continue to be made. “The game is played by human beings, it is run by human beings,” he said.
