Howard Webb admits officials made ‘wrong’ decision in Prem Leagiue VAR controversy

Fulham had a goal controversially ruled out in their 2-0 defeat by Chelsea on Saturday, with PGMOL chief Howard Webb admitting that the officials made an error

Howard Webb has confessed that his team of officials made a glaring blunder in disallowing Fulham’s goal against Chelsea. Fulham were livid after Josh King’s strike was ruled out following a VAR review in their 2-0 loss to their west London neighbours on Saturday.

King believed he had given Fulham a 1-0 lead in the derby, only for referee Rob Jones to decide that his teammate Rodrigo Muniz had fouled earlier in the move. Muniz was deemed to have made a “careless challenge” on Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah near the halfway line during the build-up to the counter-attack.

The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) subsequently axed Michael Salisbury from the Premier League clash between Liverpool and Arsenal the next day as punishment for his mistake. Salisbury was the VAR official who collaborated with Jones and advised him to examine Muniz’s involvement.

PGMOL boss Webb rang Fulham to apologise and confirmed the goal should not have been disallowed because it wasn’t a clear and obvious mistake by the referee. Instead it ought to have been considered a ‘referees’ call’.

“It wasn’t controversial, it was wrong,” he said on Match Officials Mic’d Up. “We’ve established some principles in terms of how we officiate in the Premier League and how we use VAR. They sit around a high threshold for penalising contact – it aids the flow and rhythm and tempo of the game.”, reports the Mirror.

“We’ve also established a high bar for intervention with VAR. In other words, if situations are not clearly wrong and the referee has made a call on the field, that call will stand, or at least should stand. And that’s the message that we give to all of our VARs, particularly when we come to taking away goals that are so obviously such a crucial moment in the game.

“We should only be taking goals away when the evidence is very clear that that’s the only thing we can do and that’s the guidance we give to our officials.”

Fulham boss Marco Silva branded the decision as “unbelievable”, whilst defender Antonee Robinson posted on Instagram: “If they can check something for five minutes and still get it wrong, then what’s actually the point? Standard of officiating has been shocking in the Prem for too long now.”

Webb continued: “In this situation, that guidance wasn’t followed properly. There was a misjudgement by the officials involved in this situation about how that contact happened between Muniz and Chalobah. The officials got super focused on that contact without looking at the full context of how it happened.

“It happens when Muniz is in possession of the ball, controls the ball, turns naturally and brings his foot down on to Chalobah who has moved his foot into a space which the Fulham player has the right to put his foot into in that normal way. So, a misjudgement by the officials.

“Obviously, as always, we take the learning, we look at what we can do better to ensure we reduce these to a minimum. But we’ve done really well in the last 18 months or so to reduce our involvement, with respect to the referee’s call, almost all of the time in the right way and, as a result of that, we’ve seen less interventions in the Premier League than any other major league in Europe, so we need to continue doing that.

“We understand the importance of these decisions, we understand that, if we get it wrong like we did on this occasion, the impact is significant and we’re always, always striving to do better.”