Another day, another instance of PGMOL dysfunction. It feels like at least once a season now that Liverpool are suffering the consequences of egregiously poor refereeing decisions, and last week’s match
against Manchester City (no surprise there either) was one of the latest examples.
As most are aware by now, Virgil van Dijk’s header in the first half was ruled out by Andy Robertson being in an offside position, allegedly blocking Donnarumma’s line of vision and keeping him from saving the goal. Multiple video angles have shown that not only did Robertson duck out of Donnarumma’s way, the keeper decided to dive, also moving out of the way. The decision was made on the field by Chris Kavanaugh and Stuart Burt and backed up by Michael Oliver on VAR duties.
Liverpool, understandably livid, reached out to the chief of the PGMOL Howard Webb to challenge the decision, citing that the criteria for an offside ruling was not met and that the goal should’ve stood. Though the result ultimately would not change and Liverpool would still have another loss on the table, who knows how the goal would’ve changed the match at the time, and the club feels rightly robbed of that.
The issue was escalated to the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents panel and The Times reported on Friday that the panel found that the goal was wrongly ruled offside. Unfortunately, though, the news does not stop there, as they do agree that Michael Oliver should not have overturned the decision, citing that the decision was not a “clear and obvious error.” The call from Kavanaugh and Burt was not judged as a clear error (eyeroll) and so was unlikely to be overturned at the time.
Howard Webb even defended the decision not to overturn the call on the program Match Officials Mic’d Up, admitting on camera that it was “not unreasonable” to come to the conclusion that the officials had.
“The officials have to make a judgement, did that clear action impact on the goalkeeper and his ability to save the ball? That’s where the subjectivity comes into play,” Webb said on the show.
The miscommunication can only add to the frustration that exists with the larger refereeing body that oversees the league. It is not without merit, either, as there has been years of research proving that there is clear biases within the PGMOL and that Liverpool specifically are severely disadvantaged by their decisions. There are other clubs that also have been disadvantaged, of course, but for some reason Liverpool seems to bear the brunt of the negative decisions.
This news is not new. Anyone who has watched Liverpool for any length of time knows that the referees almost refuse to give advantageous decisions to the Reds. There just has to be some kind of breaking point for this treatment, not just for Liverpool but for more fair refereeing across the board.
