Wayne Rooney and Alan Shearer were left stunned by a choice during Newcastle’s win at Aston Villa on Saturday, with the previous claiming it was one in all the worst he has ever seen.
It was a chaotic FA Cup contest at Villa Park, where the house side took the lead through Tammy Abraham on 14 minutes before shooting themselves within the foot.
Goalkeeper Marco Bizot made the wild decision to sprint out of his goal and take out Jacob Murphy on the counter-attack, earning himself a straight red card just before half-time.
Newcastle made essentially the most of the advantage, with two goals from Sandro Tonali and a 3rd from Nick Woltemade giving them a 3-1 win and put them into the hat for the fifth round draw.
Eddie Howe’s men could have thought it wasn’t going to be their day when one decision went against them at 1-0 down, though, which the officials got badly flawed.
Kieran Trippier put in a cross from the precise which Villa defender Lucas Digne handballed.
The officials spotted the infringement, but despite the Frenchman standing well contained in the penalty area and never leaving it, they gave a free-kick as a substitute of a penalty.
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Newcastle actually went on to attain from the free-kick, so it didn’t cost them, but it surely was a bizarre mistake, which neither Rooney nor Shearer could consider a top level referee would make.
‘I feel you may be critical of officials or you may praise them, either way,’ Rooney said on the BBC. ‘But that call is one in all the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in football. At no stage was Digne out the penalty box, I feel he’s three or 4 yards contained in the penalty box!
‘The linesman is just in front of us and you may clearly see how much he’s within the penalty box.
‘The referee looked like he blew and it looked like he was listening to someone in his ear, so I’m assuming the linesman has give that call and it’s an absolute shocker.’
Shearer feels it is an indication of the times, with referees and their assistants so used to with the ability to depend on VAR that they at the moment are lost without it.
There was no VAR within the FA Cup tie because it was before the fifth round and the dearth of support left the officials looking silly.
‘There’s perhaps a small excuse for the referee to not see this, and I’m being kind to him, but there isn’t a excuse in any way for the assistant, who’s 10-15 yards away,’ said Shearer. ‘Nick Greenhalgh, who had an absolute nightmare today. He’s 15 yards away from that, goodness me.
‘In the event you ever needed any evidence of the damage VAR has done to the referees, I feel today is an excellent example of that. These guys look petrified to make a choice today because they didn’t have a comfort blanket. That’s the damage its done to the officials.
‘For me, they’re actually getting worse. I actually don’t think that’s a difficult decision in any respect, in truth it’s easy. At this standard, that must be given. There’s no excuse for the assistant not to inform his referee, he’s got that completely flawed.’
It was not the one error of the sport as Abraham’s opener was offside and Newcastle boss Howe agrees with Shearer that officials rely an excessive amount of on technology.
‘I feel there’s an argument to say that, because when VAR is there, there’s all the time a, ‘Well, I won’t give that, but let’s check it’,’ he said.
‘And I feel then your decision-making possibly isn’t as sharp as it might normally should be, so possibly there’s a difference there.
‘I’m all the time torn on VAR. I said this again and again because I still love the emotion, even tonight, when a goal is given and also you don’t see a flag or a referee, it’s a goal, and nobody’s going to take it away from you.
‘That joy that you just get in that moment, I still really love and VAR takes it away. But then on the opposite side, I used to be wishing there was VAR on the primary goal against us, and possibly throughout that game.’
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