Pundit claims VAR made ‘baffling’ error during Liverpool’s Man U victory

Liverpool enjoyed a convincing victory over Manchester United but that doesn’t mean that the game was without controversy, especially in one key moment.

Taking to his X account, Neil Mellor stated: ‘Referee sees foul on Gakpo and indicates advantage… Nunez shoots wide. Contact was inside the area… so why hasn’t VAR told him he was right and contact in area so should be a pen? Baffling decision.’

This was posted alongside images of the incident where Cody Gakpo was brought down in the box by Noussair Mazraoui but no penalty was awarded.

Given the emphatic scoreline and performance, not much has been made of this mistake from the officials but if it was a game we didn’t win – then you can be assured the conversation would be much louder.

That’s why it is important to make more of this moment as we need to ensure that we don’t miss out on vital points throughout the campaign by referee errors.

It’s understandable that the bar has been raised to give those on the pitch more autonomy but this is an obvious mistake that should have been corrected by VAR.

If the bar is too high, then there’s little point in having Stockley Park at all so let’s hope they learn from this quickly and we don’t have to wait for Howard Webb to tell us he made a mistake in a month’s time when he speaks with Michael Owen.

A big error that thankfully hasn’t cost us this time out.

You can view Mellor’s comments via his X account:

Referee sees foul on Gakpo and indicates advantage… Nunez shoots wide.
Contact was inside the area… so why hasn’t VAR told him he was right and contact in area so should be a pen?
Baffling decision #ref #var #LFC #ReviewShow #LFCTV pic.twitter.com/afmM2mvLvf
— Neil Mellor (@NeilMellor33) September 2, 2024

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