WSL winner and loser: Liverpool, West Ham in misery marriage and a VAR siren song | OneFootball

Arsenal’s draw with Chelsea felt like a VAR crossroads but will the WSL learn from the Premier League’s mistakes? Meanwhile West Ham and Liverpool are in a marriage of misery.

Winner: The relegation battle

It must be comforting for West Ham and Liverpool to know that no matter how terrible they are the other will be just as awful, and that 2025/2026 season reality was borne out in stunning fashion on Sunday.

Neither team had a point as Liverpool hosted Brighton and West Ham welcomed Leicester to the Chigwell Construction Stadium, with the Hammers bottom by virtue of their harrowing -16 goal difference compared to the Reds’ -9, and with Liverpool having played a game less.

As their stride-matching form dictates, both were remarkably heading for three points up until the final throes.

Beata Olsson had put Liverpool in front midway through the second half as Chiamaka Nnadozie in the Brighton goal bizarrely looked as though she had been taken out by a sniper rifle as the ball trickled over the line. And Shekiera Martinez bundled the ball in at the front post for the Hammers shortly after half-time.

And the mood was briefly buoyant among the West Ham fans when with four minutes to play in their game, news filtered through of Rosa Kafaji equalising in stoppage-time for Brighton to deny Liverpool all three points. It meant the Hammers would be off the foot of the table if they could only hang on.

But of course they couldn’t. They and Liverpool are destined to be inextricably tied in a marriage of misery this season. Some shocking defending from a deep free-kick granted Shannon O’Brien the easy task of breaking Hammer hearts in the seventh minute of injury time.

Loser: VAR siren song

Amid the football-wide frustration with VAR –  the way it slows down the game, goal celebration caution, the ‘so what if referees made mistakes?’ argument – it’s now accepted that we must all accept our lot. If you’ve got it there’s no going back. Any alterations to the current system will be to streamline or increase its scope.

Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea felt like a video technology crossroads for the WSL. A game played in front of over 50,000 people at the Emirates saw a number of refereeing mistakes define it. And there will have been many leaving the stadium asking – as they did over five years ago after Premier League games – “why can’t we have it to rule out those really big mistakes?”.

Chelsea were 1-0 up after an impressive first-half performance included a sublime first WSL goal from Alyssa Thompson, which saw her run from deep, exchange passes with Johanna Rytting Kaneryd and then loft a curled shot over Daphne van Domselaar.

Stina Blackstenius thought she had smashed the Gunners level eight minutes into the second half, controlling the ball on her thigh before firing into the roof of Hannah Hampton’s net, only for referee Melissa Burgin to rule it out for a handball that wasn’t. A one-replay VAR check would have been enough to right that wrong.

It wouldn’t have taken much longer than that for Victoria Pelova’s horrible studs-up challenge on Keira Walsh to have been deemed reckless and for her to have been given her marching orders. Walsh was lucky to walk away from it.

And to cap a game acting as a siren song for the introduction of VAR, Alessia Russo’s 87th-minute goal should have been ruled out for offside.

The result of all of those refereeing missteps and shenanigans? A fair result between two evenly-matched teams. And while there will be calls for VAR in a ‘the men’s game has it so why not the women’s?’ bid for equality. We could instead see it as an opportunity for the WSL to learn from the Premier League’s mistake.