Former referees Dermot Gallagher and Stephen Warnock have debated how to handle Luis Diaz’s offside goal in Liverpool’s loss to Tottenham.
Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher claimed Simon Hooper was “helpless” and would have risked his integrity if he overturned the situation to award a disallowed goal to Luis Diaz in Liverpool’s match with Tottenham.
The Red Devils were denied an opener in the 34th minute on Saturday night, shortly after Curtis Jones was sent off for a serious foul.
They went on to lose the match 2-1 thanks to an unfortunate own goal in stoppage time, with the PGMOL issuing a letter stating that the poor result achieved with Diaz’s strike was due to a “serious error”. human dignity”.
Analyzing the incident on Sky Sports’ weekly Ref Watch program, former top coach Gallagher admitted to making the wrong decision, and objected to the Liverpool club’s statement released on Sunday night. . The letter described the inaccurate call as “unacceptable”, believing the integrity of the sport had been compromised.
“Honestly, I don’t understand what that means,” he said. “Sorry, I really don’t know.
“It was a mistake, referees always make mistakes and yesterday you said it was my 25th anniversary at Sky, you can find a lot of mistakes in me, to be honest.
“But it was a mistake. It was a very, very, very bad mistake, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s a mistake. It is not done deliberately.”
Also on the show’s panel was regular Stephen Warnock, who made 67 Reds appearances in his time at the club. He took Gallagher to task over his opinion.
“We’re talking human error again and the integrity of the game. Now the integrity of the game is Liverpool have scored a legitimate goal,” he responded
This is where the rule book goes out the window, and I know everybody will say no, but it should to keep the integrity of the game where common sense comes into it.
“You [Darren England] go ‘Simon, we’ve messed up – not you – we have’, because they made Simon Hooper look a fool on TV and to the world who are watching football. ‘We’ve made an error, you need to atone for this error’.
“The way of doing that could simply be walk to the side of the pitch, blow the whistle and say to both managers come in, both captains come in, say ‘the VAR have made an error, this is what has happened’. This would have took two or three minutes to do but you get the right decision
“You say ‘it’s a goal to Liverpool, what my recommendation is to atone for this error is to do a bounce of the ball and allow Liverpool to score’. After the game – even at half time – an announcement is put out by the PGMOL straight away. That would have been around in 10 seconds and everyone would have gone ‘amazing, we know where we stand’.
“Whereas they’ve made it look an absolute mess, and now it is a mess.”
Gallagher replied: “I can’t deny that, but the trouble is that solution is not possible. It is great in theory but in the laws of the game the referee is powerless to do that.
“He cannot do that, there is no way in the law – no caveat, no nothing that says ‘common sense says this’. The minute he does that he has then broken the laws of the game and he has then undermined his own integrity and credibility.
“The FA would then charge him for not playing the laws correctly. I know all about integrity, I know all about credibility, but if I was that referee that day, I’d be powerless. I might want to do it.”
Warnock concluded that the reality of events is unacceptable. Gallagher meanwhile did admit that Spurs “got lucky” themselves in regard to Destiny Udogie not receiving a second yellow card for gesturing towards Hooper to issue a booking to Diogo Jota, and fired a final warning in the direction of all Premier League referees collectively and PGMOL.
He said: “You’ve got to learn from it. There is no way ever this can happen again. I made mistakes – gave penalties that weren’t penalties and didn’t give penalties that were – but this can’t happen again.”
.
