Keith Hackett fumes at VAR officials after controversial decision in Leeds United 6-1 loss v Liverpool in Premier League
Keith Hackett believes the officials “let the game down” during Leeds United’s 6-1 loss to Liverpool after not disallowing Cody Gakpo’s goal.
The Whites were battered at Elland Road on Monday night (17 April) but the goals began after a Trent Alexander-Arnold handball wasn’t spotted and he went on to assist the Dutch forward.
Despite VAR checks the goal wasn’t disallowed, and after admitting to being baffled by the decision earlier in the day Hackett returned to the decision on his personal Twitter account (18 April) to criticise the referee and VAR officials.
“Dale it is frankly an easy handball decision,” he said. “Ref/VAR you let the game down.”
Ridiculous
Even Stevie Wonder could see that Alexander-Arnold sticks his arm out to stop the ball going past him and it should be disallowed.
We can give the referee the benefit of the doubt for not seeing it initially because the game is quick and it happens in a split second, but for VAR to look at replays of the decision over and over again and come to that conclusion is mind boggling.
Obviously the end result suggests the decision didn’t really matter too much, but up to that point Leeds were right in the game and Liverpool hadn’t even had a shot on target yet.
That decision completely changed the outlook of the game and ultimately Leeds let themselves down defensively, but with the position we’re in domestically we can’t afford for decisions like that to go against us.
Relegation now looks like a real possibility once again with so much hard work being undone in the last two games, but referees and VAR officials can’t get things like that wrong. It’s so clear, and it’s cost us massively.
We’ll await our apology from the PGMOL, but it matters little now.
In other Leeds news, the club are set to complete their first summer signing in the “next few hours”.