PGMOL Chief Howard Webb comes to the defence of Michael Oliver after error in Tottenham Arsenal clash
Howard Webb, the big boss over at PGMOL, held his hands up and admitted there was a bit of an err in not giving Tottenham a penalty during the North London derby clash against Arsenal. It was one of those moments that had us Spurs fans biting our nails down to the quick, especially with the game hanging in the balance.
Picture this: Spurs, on the hunt for another goal to chip away at Arsenal’s lead, when all of a sudden, Declan Rice decides to take out Ben Davies with an attempted clearance. Now, that sounds like a textbook penalty, but Michael Oliver, the man in charge on the pitch, missed it. Luckily, VAR swooped in to save the day, sparing Oliver the embarrassment of making a major blunder.
Webb owned up to the mistake in a chat about the incident on the latest episode of Match Officials Mic’d Up. He acknowledged that Oliver might be feeling a tad gutted about the whole thing, especially considering how good he was apart from this incident. [h/t Evening Standard]
“I know Michael [Oliver] will be really disappointed,”
“But I know you’ll be disappointed he misread that in the moment and we all can misread things in the moment. I did that many times myself. But thankfully we’ve got VAR that can look at these situations very quickly. You’ll hear Jarred Gillett at the VAR check it, stop the game in a neutral zone so nothing else can happen.”
“For example, we don’t want a goal scored at the other end and then having to take that away as well. Stop the game as soon as possible. Michael went to the screen, looked at it, quickly saw the error and gave a penalty. And as you say, without VAR this would have stayed as a non-awarded penalty. It would have been hugely controversial. So a really good use of the VAR facility here.”
VAR – Good or bad?
Thank goodness they did, because without VAR, that penalty would have gone begging, leaving Spurs fans up in arms. Even though we did not win the game, it could have gone much worse if the penalty also did not go our way.
Good on VAR for stepping in and setting things right. As Webb put it, it was a top-notch use of the technology, saving us from what could have been a right old mess. And let’s face it, we wouldn’t want to see a goal scored at the other end, only to have it taken away because of a missed penalty call.
However, VAR isn’t always the knight in shining armour. Sometimes, it’s more like the villain in the shadows, stirring up controversy left, right, and centre. It still has a long way to go, and the people operating it have to find the balance, identify when the on-field ref is actually wrong, and give proper input instead of suggestive actions.
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In this case, VAR worked in our favour, and rightly so. It’s all about finding that balance – using VAR to correct clear and obvious errors without disrupting the flow of the game. And on this occasion, it did just that.
