Steven Gerrard highlighted the time taken for the VAR check that disallowed Danny Ings’ strike in Aston Villa’s FA Cup exit at Manchester United, but refused to blame it for the defeat.
It took more than three and a half minutes for VAR Darren England and on-field referee Michael Oliver to decide Jacob Ramsey’s block on Edinson Cavani in the build-up to Ings’ finish had been both offside and interfering with play, raising questions over the “clear-and-obvious” threshold needed for the video official to overturn a decision.
With the goal disallowed, Villa fell to a narrow defeat through Scott McTominay’s early header, leaving them out of the FA Cup in Gerrard’s first match in the competition as a manager.
VAR in England definitely makes things much easier for referees but for those who are making bets on live football it could be pretty much difficult.
When asked about the decision, he told BBC Sport: “How long have you got? The officials took three and a half minutes to settle that one. They have looked at two or three things in it.
“When VAR is there and they make a decision you have to accept it. There is nothing you can do to change it. The easy way out is to blame luck and the officials, we won’t do that.
“It’s very tough. We are out of the FA Cup and coming into this job I saw this competition as an opportunity to have a good run in it.
“We dominated for large parts but we were not ruthless enough.
“I’ve seen enough tonight in terms of the performance to know that I can get to where I want to get to but we need to learn and learn quickly. We need to be more ruthless moving forward, defending crosses we need to be tighter.
“We cannot be having people with free headers in our six yard box. It is quite clear what we need to iron out and we will do it in the short term.“
“It’s very, very rare you see a VAR send the referee to the monitor for an offside decision. It can only happen if it is a subjective decision and not a factual decision. On this basis, Darren England sent Michael Oliver, explained why he had sent him, Oliver looked at it, felt that Cavani had been impacted by Ramsey and disallowed the goal.
“It took three and a half minutes – a long, long time as there were a lot of things to look at – and, in the end, the law does say ‘does he impact on an opponent?’. It comes down to the referee’s judgement.
“Being in an offside position is not an offence in itself – you have to touch the ball or impact on an opponent, and the second part is the key element of it. I think that’s why it took so long. They checked three different elements of why the goal should be given or disallowed and, in the end, they felt that the third element – the Ramsey impact – was a key issue.
“It hasn’t taken three and a half minutes to get to that conclusion. What it has taken is three minutes is to go through all three parts. It took a long time to check whether Watkins had struck the ball. You see that run and run and run, which has eaten up a lot of time. It has taken time to check whether Danny Ings has handled the ball and then, what I would say is that when you look at the third part, it was the part that was better used in the time, it was quicker to do that.“