Further information released as to why controversial VAR check took so long in game between Newcastle United and Manchester City
Manchester City beat Newcastle United 2-0 at St James' Park last night to give themselves a fantastic chance of progressing to Wembley to the Carabao Cup final, but the talk about that game today is dominated by a goal that wasn't given rather than the two that stood.
VAR is back amongst the headlines again today after they took over five minutes to make a decision to disallow a goal from Antoine Semenyo.
After an age, it was determined that Erling Haaland was in an offside position when Semenyo flicked the ball goalwards, and then it became about whether the Norwegian was interfering with play, which was determined to be the case after an on-field review.
One of the big questions on the night was where was the semi-automated offside technology that was supposed to speed up this whole process?
Semi-Automated Offside Technology could not work in that instance last night
Semi-automated Offside Technology (SAOT) was brought in to prevent all of this faffing on drawing lines, which takes far too long, but last night saw that the technology is still heavily flawed.
A report by ESPN today has revealed that the technology couldn't be used in this instance because there were too many players in the box around the ball for it to work effectively.
We have seen some insanely tight calls ruled by SAOT, and even though it was brought in to simplify the offside process, its validity has been called into question more than once.
Introduce the Arsene Wenger Law and be done with his nonsense
We keep banging on about it, but this is just another example of why the Arsene Wenger Law needs to come into effect next season.
Arsene Wenger has proposed that we go back to offside calls requiring the player to be clearly ahead of the last defender to stop all of these debates about eyelashes being offside, or in the case of last night, the thickness of a sock.
Technology is meant to make things easier, but since VAR was introduced, it has only served to ruin the game. It's a good idea that simply isn't ready.
