September 21, (THEWILL) – The most revealing part of the Premier League’s latest VAR controversy was not the goal that should never have stood. It was what happened after the mistake had been acknowledged.
Erling Haaland’s 60th-minute winner in Manchester City’s 1-0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford was initially ruled out for offside before a lengthy video review overturned the decision.
The review established that Haaland himself was in an onside position, but failed to properly assess the role of his teammate, Enzo Fernández, who was positioned offside and appeared to interfere with Manchester United’s defensive actions.
Days later, Howard Webb, Pro Ref’s chief refereeing officer, admitted that the decision was wrong. He described the VAR process as suffering from “tunnel vision”, with officials becoming so focused on Haaland’s position that they failed to consider the wider implications of Fernández’s movement.
Webb confirmed that the goal should have been disallowed and said he was “really disappointed” with the outcome. Pro Ref also contacted Manchester United to acknowledge the error, while VAR official Matt Donohue and assistant VAR Blake Antrobus were stood down until after the international break.
The admission was swift. The explanation was detailed. The consequence, however, remained limited to the officiating team.
Manchester United still lost the derby. Manchester City retained the three points. The goal remained in the record books.
That tension between transparency and accountability is becoming central to the debate around Premier League officiating.
Mistake Behind the Mistake
The controversy at Old Trafford was not simply about whether Haaland was onside. That part of the review was technically correct. The more significant failure concerned Fernández, who was in an offside position and moved towards the ball without making contact.
Under the Laws of the Game, a player does not necessarily need to touch the ball to be penalised for offside. Interfering with an opponent can be sufficient, particularly where the player’s movement affects a defender’s ability to challenge or a goalkeeper’s ability to respond.
Webb acknowledged that Fernández’s actions likely affected both Lisandro Martínez and goalkeeper Senne Lammens. The Manchester City midfielder’s movement towards the cross influenced the defensive sequence, even though he missed the ball before Haaland finished the attack.
The VAR team, however, concentrated on whether Haaland was onside and whether Fernández had touched the ball. Once the officials established that Haaland was onside and Fernández had made no contact, the review proceeded towards approving the goal.
The full attacking phase was not properly evaluated.
That distinction matters because VAR is not designed merely to identify one technically correct element of an incident. Its purpose is to review the relevant phase of play and determine whether the final decision should stand. In this case, Pro Ref’s own explanation confirmed that the process failed to reach the correct outcome.
The issue, therefore, was not the absence of technology. It was the way the technology was used.
Arsenal’s Penalty Controversy Adds to the Pressure
The Manchester derby was not the only major officiating incident to attract attention during the opening weeks of the season.
In Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over Aston Villa on August 31, the Premier League’s independent Key Match Incidents Panel later concluded that the Gunners should have been awarded a late penalty after Ian Maatsen’s challenge on Bruno Guimarães.
The incident occurred deep into stoppage time, with Arsenal already leading through Bukayo Saka’s second-half goal. Referee Jarred Gillett did not award a penalty, while VAR official James Bell did not recommend an on-field review.
The KMI Panel subsequently ruled unanimously that a spot-kick should have been awarded. It found that Maatsen had made contact with Guimarães’ standing leg without touching the ball and described the challenge as reckless. The panel also concluded that Maatsen should have received a second yellow card, which would have resulted in his dismissal.
The decision did not alter the match result. Arsenal had already secured the victory, and the missed penalty did not deprive them of points. Nevertheless, the retrospective finding exposed another situation in which the official review process failed to intervene despite the incident meeting the threshold for a clear and obvious error.
The Premier League has begun publishing KMI Panel assessments in an effort to improve transparency. That initiative gives the public greater access to how controversial decisions are evaluated after matches.
But it also creates a difficult question: does publishing an error provide meaningful accountability when the sporting consequences remain untouched?
The Difference Between Transparency and Remedy
There is an important distinction between acknowledging a mistake and providing a remedy.
In the case of the Manchester derby, Pro Ref accepted that the goal should not have stood. The officials were removed from the following weekend’s appointments, and Webb explained how the review had gone wrong.
Those measures are not meaningless. Reviewing errors, examining communication failures and temporarily withdrawing officials can form part of a system designed to improve performance. Referees and VAR officials must be assessed, and serious mistakes should have professional consequences.
However, those actions do not address the competitive impact of the original decision.
Manchester United’s defeat remains unchanged, even though the league’s refereeing leadership later acknowledged that the decisive goal should have been disallowed. Arsenal’s missed penalty against Aston Villa remains a missed opportunity, even though the independent panel concluded that the decision and the failure to intervene were both incorrect.
This is the structural limitation of retrospective officiating reviews. They can establish what should have happened, but they cannot normally recreate the moment in which the error occurred.
The Premier League cannot simply award Manchester United a point or replay the final 30 minutes of the derby because a VAR decision was incorrect. Nor can Arsenal be given a penalty after the final whistle has already been blown. The competition’s results must retain a degree of finality, otherwise every post-match review could create a new dispute over the status of the table.
Yet finality should not be confused with accountability.
A system can preserve results while still improving the consequences attached to officiating failures. That could include clearer public explanations, more detailed assessments of individual errors, stronger training requirements, independent review procedures and greater consistency in how officials are appointed after serious mistakes.
The central issue is not necessarily whether a match should be replayed. It is whether clubs and supporters can trust that an acknowledged error will lead to meaningful institutional learning rather than a familiar cycle of statement, explanation and return.
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A New Era of Public Scrutiny
Pro Ref’s public response to the Haaland incident came relatively quickly. The body acknowledged the error, Webb explained the decision-making failure, and the audio from the review was made available through the Premier League’s Match Officials: Mic’d Up programme.
That level of openness is a departure from the more guarded approach historically associated with refereeing controversies. Supporters can now hear the conversations behind certain decisions and examine the reasoning offered by officials.
Greater transparency can strengthen public understanding. It can also expose the gap between what officials intended to assess and what they actually assessed.
In the Haaland incident, the audio and subsequent explanation made the problem easier to identify. The VAR team had confirmed that Haaland was onside but failed to properly evaluate Fernández’s impact on the play. The process was visible, and so was the failure.
But visibility alone does not guarantee confidence.
For supporters of clubs affected by incorrect decisions, an apology can feel insufficient when the error has already influenced a result. The frustration is intensified when the same language appears repeatedly: disappointment, review, learning and improvement.
Those commitments are necessary, but they must be supported by evidence that the system has changed.
A Warning for Nigerian Football
The debate has implications beyond the Premier League, particularly as football authorities in Nigeria continue to consider the expansion of video-assisted officiating.
The Nigeria Professional Football League has identified VAR implementation as a priority in its long-term refereeing development plans. Former Nigeria Football Federation president Ibrahim Gusau also pledged to train Nigerian referees in VAR operations before the end of 2026, although the status of that commitment following the NFF’s leadership crisis remains unclear.
If VAR is introduced more extensively into Nigerian football, the technology will arrive with both its benefits and its institutional challenges.
Cameras, communication systems and review screens can help officials make better decisions, but they cannot eliminate human error. A VAR official can still focus on the wrong detail, fail to assess the full attacking phase or misunderstand the threshold for intervention.
The Premier League’s experience demonstrates that the introduction of technology is not the end of the refereeing debate. It is the beginning of a more demanding one.
Nigerian football administrators will need to consider not only how decisions are reviewed, but also how mistakes are recorded, explained and addressed. They will have to establish clear standards for training, appointment, performance evaluation and public communication.
Most importantly, they must avoid presenting VAR as a guarantee of perfect officiating.
The Question That Remains
The Premier League’s early-season controversies have not demonstrated that every refereeing decision is wrong, nor that VAR has failed in every respect. The KMI Panel’s weekly assessments also show that many decisions are judged correct, including several VAR interventions.
The problem is more specific: high-profile errors continue to occur in moments that can directly influence results, while the remedies available after those errors remain limited.
Pro Ref’s admission over the Haaland goal was important because it identified the precise failure in the review process. The KMI Panel’s ruling on the Arsenal penalty was similarly valuable because it explained why the decision should have been overturned.
But the credibility of the system will ultimately depend on what follows those explanations.
An apology can clarify what went wrong. A review can identify the point of failure. A period away from appointments can provide an immediate professional response.
The longer-term test is whether those measures produce better decisions when the next decisive moment arrives.
For Manchester United, the derby defeat remains part of the season’s record. For Arsenal, the missed penalty against Aston Villa remains a decision that cannot be revisited. For supporters across the league, the question is no longer simply whether officials can admit their mistakes.
It is whether the structures surrounding those mistakes are strong enough to ensure that the same failures do not keep returning under a different match, a different referee and a different scoreline.
The feature is built around the distinction between admission, professional consequence and sporting remedy, while avoiding the unsupported claim that Pro Ref has provided “zero consequences” altogether. The available evidence confirms that officials were stood down after the Manchester derby incident, even though the match result remained unchanged.
Olumide Atiba is a sports journalist with THEWILL, known for his keen news sense and compelling storytelling. He has built a reputation for turning leads into clear, well-structured reports that resonate with readers, with a strong focus on football coverage
