It has been revealed that Brentford’s controversial equaliser against Arsenal was only allowed to stand after it was revealed that VAR official Lee Mason forgot to draw the lines that would have shown Christian Norgaard was offside in the build-up to Ivan Toney’s strike.
Gunners boss Mikel Arteta was left fuming after VAR officials made two errors when they reviewed Toney’s goal that prevented the north London side from taking an eight-point lead at the top of the Premier League table, after Leandro Trossard had scored his first goal for the club to give them the lead.
Mason took three minutes to adjudge that Bees centre-back Ethan Pinnock was not interfering with play by blocking Gabriel Magalhaes from getting to the ball initially, a decision disputed by Arteta after the game.
“The action when you get blocked when you are offside,” the Arsenal boss said. “You cannot block if you are offside.
“Looking at the images, you have to apply certain principles in defending and you do that by sticking to the rules and suddenly you apply different rules then you have to change your principles.
“So tell us before because then you don’t hold the line that high because you’re always going to have an advantage if you get blocked.”
Mason then compounded that error by giving the greenlight to Toney’s header after forgetting to check whether Norgaard had strayed beyond Ben White, Arsenal’s last man, before he prodded the ball into the path of Brentford’s top scorer.
“Ivan puts the ball in the net and VAR Lee Mason obviously runs through the checks,” said Mail on Sunday referee expert and PGMOL representative Chris Foy, who was in the Match Centre at Stockley Park on Saturday.
“VAR was looking to see if there was an offside. And whether Ethan Pinnock had blocked off Gabriel in the build-up.
“He looked at the possible foul and decided there hadn’t been one. And therefore referee Peter Bankes hadn’t made a clear and obvious error.
No VAR lines drawn
“However, in the build-up to the goal, Christian Norgaard — whose cross it is that Toney heads in — is in an offside position.
“However, the truth is that VAR didn’t fully investigate with the lines. The lines, simply, didn’t go down. And that counts as human error.
“Had the lines gone down the goal would have been disallowed for offside.”
The result against the Bees could end up having huge title ramifications for Arsenal, if they go on to lose it by a narrow margin.
However, Arteta‘s men are still in the box seat despite a slip in form that has seen them without a win in their last three games in all competitions.
Next up for the Gunners is a huge Premier League showdown with Manchester City on Wednesday evening.
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