English Premier League officials have removed John Brooks from the video refereeing team for two matches, who mistakenly disallowed Brighton’s goal in Saturday’s league match against Crystal Palace while sitting in the VAR room. A similar human error occurred in Arsenal’s match at the weekend – an extraordinary video referee meeting will follow this week.
At 0–0, Brighton scored a goal in the 32nd minute through Pervis Estupinan, which was later disallowed for offside. After the match, Brighton filed a complaint against the verdict, and the league later admitted that John Brooks, working in the VAR room, misinterpreted the offside situation and wrongly canceled the goal. This later turned out to be decisive, as sixth-placed Brighton, who were pushing for international cup participation, only achieved a 1-1 draw, earning only one point instead of three.
According to the league, due to his mistake, Brooks was removed from the team of Monday’s Liverpool-Everton and Wednesday’s Arsenal-Manchester City rallies.
John Brooks was on VAR duty for Crystal Palace & Brighton on Saturday, where the latter were incorrectly denied a goal after the WRONG PLAYER was used when drawing lines to check an offside, one of the two high-profile mistakes in the Premier League this weekend.#afc https://t.co/KUxNbBxKU0 pic.twitter.com/IUYAdpHesR
— afcstuff (@afcstuff) February 13, 2023
Errors in the use of VAR are not uncommon in the Premier League. On Saturday, not only Brighton suffered a disadvantage because of this, but also the leader Arsenal, who played a 1-1 draw with Brentford, but according to the footage, the Brentford team’s goal should have been disallowed because one of the visitors’ players was off guard during the attack build-up.
BBC Sport confirms that VAR mistake during Arsenal match was due to ‘human error’
“VAR operator Lee Mason did not draw the guidelines to check for offside on Brentford’s equaliser against Arsenal.” #AFC #COYG @BBCSport pic.twitter.com/8ASixScYQ1
— Punch Drunk Arsenal (@PunchDrunkAFC) February 13, 2023
Howard Webb, the head of the English professional refereeing body, PGMOL, contacted the two disadvantaged clubs on Sunday and admitted that human error had occurred in both cases.
The former famous FIFA referee at the same time for an extraordinary meeting called the English VAR referees together; according to local newspaper information, the topic of Tuesday’s meeting will be a discussion of the two big mistakes of the weekend, a thorough analysis of the two situations, so that similar blunders can be avoided in the future.
