VAR urged Jarred Gillett to change his mind on Arsenal penalty | OneFootball

The Video Assistant Referee had to convince Jarred Gillett to change his mind about the penalty he awarded to Arsenal on Sunday, according to the NBC Sports commentary team.

Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images

Arsenal were awarded a penalty in the first half of Sunday’s game against Newcastle United, with the scores level at 0-0. Nick Pope had clearly brought down Viktor Gyokeres, and Jarred Gillett had a clear view of the incident to award the spot-kick.

Yet Gillett ultimately overturned the decision after consulting with the VAR, who had spotted that Pope got a glancing touch on the ball. The NBC Sports commentary team revealed that the video assistant pushed the referee to change his mind.

Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images

Unlike the fans at home, the TV commentators are able to hear the conversations between the referee and his video assistants, with NBC’s team sharing details of the discussion.

“We can hear the VAR talking to the referee and he’s having to really explain it time and again to Jarred Gillett, who’s still looking at the screen,” the commentator said.

“You can kind of tell that the VAR is trying to guide Jarred Gillett towards a position where he says ‘actually no, my decision made in the best of faith in the instant is not correct’.”

Photo by George Wood/Getty Images

The issue here is that the remit of VAR has always been to overturn clear and obvious errors. At the start of the season, there were plenty of media reports to suggest the Premier League would be implementing an even higher bar for overturns than in previous campaigns.

If Gillett needed to watch replay after replay and have the VAR push him to change his mind, then you’d think the incident wouldn’t meet that high threshold.

“If it’s not a clear and obvious error, VAR should not intervene,” Mikel Arteta pointed out afterwards. “We’ve been told this for a few years, [at] this start of the season again. For me, it’s very clear that VAR doesn’t have to intervene because it’s a penalty.”

“If we have VAR, it’s for a clear and obvious error,” Bukayo Saka agreed. “The fact that it took the ref that long to decide shows it’s not a clear and obvious error.”

Arsenal won the match anyway, with comeback goals in the 84th and 96th minutes. But if the officials had followed the Premier League guidance it could have been a much more straightforward afternoon.