Sky Sports presenter Joe Thomlinson has slammed the use of VAR for Michail Antonio’s late goal during West Ham’s comfortable win.
West Ham were engulfed in a lot of controversies during their 3-1 win on Sunday at the London Stadium, as Gianluca Scamacca’s strike was reviewed by VAR for handball, while Antonio also appeared to handle the ball in the build-up to his goal. Earlier, their penalty may also have been a dubious decision given Craig Dawson’s flailing arm.
However, that shouldn’t take away from the fact they came from behind after a very early Fulham goal and have now won back-to-back games – although, as mentioned above, they did appear to get some help from VAR, as the technology had another inconsistent weekend.
Thomlinson has slammed the decision to allow Antonio’s goal given that a few hours later, Marcus Rashford had one ruled out for something very similar.
The Sky Sports man tweeted: “The lack of consistency by Premier League refs & VAR is actually comical… How was this allowed and Rashford’s wasn’t, then? Ridiculous.”
Should Antonio's goal have been ruled out?
Yes!
No!
TIF Thoughts on Antonio’s goal…
It’s fair enough that Thomlinson was annoyed by this incident, as Rashford’s goal was probably nowhere near as obvious of a handball as Antonio’s was, yet VAR decided to rule that one out while West Ham saw their goal stand.
While neither goal nor impacted their respective results – with Antonio’s coming in second-half stoppage time when the game was pretty much settled already and Rashford’s Manchester United holding on regardless – it isn’t good enough for VAR to be this consistent.
That is what is frustrating fans – not necessarily the use of VAR or it being used in the first place, but the fact that the decisions are still inconsistent despite it having been used for several seasons is something that has to be addressed in the near future.