London, Oct 11: Premier League referees’ chief Howard Webb says ‘steps taken’ to avoid repeat of Luis Diaz VAR error on Wednesday.
Video assistant referee (VAR) Darren England did not overrule when Diaz was wrongly flagged offside last month.Resulting in, Liverpool lost the game 2-1.“We’ve put quite a lot of steps in place to ensure the error that we saw doesn’t happen again,” Webb said.
In audio recordings of discussions between the match officials made public by referees’ body the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), England says the check is “perfect” before swearing when he realises a mistake has been made.
Webb said VAR had “fallen short” on this occasion and the PGMOL needed to act, with new VAR communication guidelines being applied since then.“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,” added Webb .“We got all of the officials together, we spoke through the need to go through that process very diligently. (AP)