Premier League: Howard Webb, chief of Referees’ board depicts “steps taken” to prevent error, in the wake of Luis Diaz event

Premier League referees’ board chief Howard Webb has mentioned about taking possible steps in the wake of Luis Diaz event, when the Colombian’s goal was ruled out offside by Video Assistant Referee Darren England in Liverpool’s fixture against Tottenham, as a result Klopp’s men lost the game to Spurs. After garnering widespread criticism after the match, referees’ body PGMOL had admitted it to be a “significant human error”, costing the Reds the game.

“Significant human error”

Luis Diaz’s goal was wrongly disallowed in their game against Spurs. In a match where reputation is at stake, Liverpool lost against Spurs, thus creating a stir in the decision of match officials. After the game, it was Referees’ body PGMOL who had admitted in a confession that it was a “significant human error” by the match officials, and they would look into the matter. It caused a outbreak in the English football circuit, leading Klopp to mention about the loss of points, as they would not be awarded any points for the mistake.

In the wake of the surfacing of audio recordings which was publicly demanded, it was heard that the check was “perfect” before swearing on realization of committing a grave mistake, as Howard Webb mentioned, “We’ve put quite a lot of steps in place to ensure the error that we saw doesn’t happen again.” He has also mentioned that VAR had “fallen short” and they needed to act according to new guidelines.

“We’re really disappointed”

Howard Webb continued, “One of things this brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols which are really valuable in VAR to prevent this type of thing happening. We got all of the officials together, we spoke through the need to go through that process very diligently. We’re really disappointed for the game, we’re disappointed for our reputation. We worked hard over the subsequent days to have a look at what we needed to do to put in place those safeguards around the communication to avoid that sort of thing happening again.”

What happened?

Liverpool and Tottenham were fiercely competing against each other, with the match hanging in balance at 0-0. Curtis Jones was red carded for his tackle on Yves Bissouma, thus going down to 10 men in the first half. Luis Diaz has hit the back of the net, but as the score line read 1-0 in favor of Reds, flag was immediately raised, ruling his goal for offside. But, on the replays, it was confirmed that Diaz was onside and the goal should have stood. After careful evaluation, England and his men had indicated to on field official Hooper that the goal was disallowed, and the match would start at 0-0, with Spurs getting the kick.

What are the changes?

Speaking to Sky Sports, Webb was heard speaking about the modifications that were implemented after the mishap. He said, “We took the unusual step of releasing the audio from this situation not long after it happened. We wanted to show everybody what was quickly apparent to us was a pretty significant human error – loss of concentration. One of the things that we have to do is put things in place to ensure that should we have human error, it doesn’t have the damaging impact that we saw on this occasion.”

He further added, “We want the on-field referee to communicate to the VAR what the on-field decision is, very clearly. Then the VAR to go back to the on-field referee and acknowledge that they’ve heard that properly. The VAR goes through the process then of checking the situation giving clear direction to the replay operator to get the right angles, speaking to that assistant VAR as they go through that as well, so the assistant VAR can be another check and balance, before communicating to the field, speaking to the AVAR [assistant VAR] to say what their intended direction of travel is going to be.”

He also expressed his opinions on Mateo Kovacic’s foul against Arsenal, as he said, “he was extremely fortunate”. Webb said, “Obviously the VAR can’t get involved, second yellows are something that the VAR is not able to get involved in. But I think he was an extremely fortunate player to stay on the field of play. The referee – one of our best referees, one of the best referees in the world – Michael Oliver, will no doubt review that.”