😳 Arsenal helped by VAR? Total fury in Premier League, West Ham and fans 🤬 | OneFootball

The incident that took place in the final minutes of West Ham-Arsenal is bound to spark debate for a long time yet.

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The decision made by referee Chris Kavanagh, after being called over by the VAR room, has in fact left huge doubts and will prove massively significant for the balance of the league. A choice that will, in effect, impact both the Premier League title race between Arsenal and Manchester City, and the relegation battle involving two historic and prestigious clubs like West Ham and Tottenham.

💥 1-1 in the 95th minute: VAR calls the referee over for Raya-Pablo contact

Let’s go through what happened in order. In the penultimate minute, West Ham dramatically found an equaliser against Arsenal through Collum Wilson.

The move came from a corner: Raya completely mistimed his attempt to claim the ball, it ricocheted off the Hammers striker and ended up in the net. Arsenal’s players immediately began protesting, appealing for a foul on the goalkeeper. VAR checked the incident and called the referee over for an on-field review.

❌ After the OFR, Kavanagh disallows West Ham’s goal amid protests

Kavanagh was called to the monitor and, from the moment of the goal to the final decision, a full five minutes passed. During the on-field review — as reported by Sky Sports — as many as 17 different frames were analysed, with the focus on the contact between Raya and Pablo, who had extended his arm into the Arsenal goalkeeper.

For the referee, that intervention was enough to rule out West Ham’s goal. Furious protests from the Hammers followed, while Arsenal breathed a huge sigh of relief.

🤬 West Ham FURIOUS: Wilson quotes Mou, Bowen rages after the match

"I prefer not to speak” by Jose Mourinho: that is the snapshot used by the disallowed goalscorer, Callum Wilson, on his Instagram. An image that speaks volumes, just like the words of Hammers captain Jarrod Bowen after the game:

"You can’t just charge into a goalkeeper, of course, but Raya came out to claim the ball and has to expect a bit of contact. This is the Premier League: physical contact is part of the game. My feeling is that if you look at an incident long enough, you’ll always find something to give as a foul. Anyone who knows football knows it remains a physical sport. If this is a foul, then it has to be one every week. The real problem is understanding where the line is and what the standard actually is.”

West Ham manager Nuno Espírito Santo also hit out strongly, claiming that by now “no one understands anymore what is and isn’t a foul” in today’s football.

👊 Arteta defends referee and VAR: "Clear foul, right decision"

As expected, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta defended the VAR decision to disallow Wilson’s goal. “When you look at the images there is no doubt, it’s a clear foul. They were very brave,” he said after the match.

📺 The controversy explodes: pundit review and criticism of the decision

This incident is being discussed everywhere, and it has raised huge doubts not so much because of the contact itself, but because of the context of the move and the refereeing standard applied in the Premier League.

Particularly harsh in this respect was the analysis from The Athletic, which called the scene “the perfect image of the 2025-26 Premier League”.

According to the outlet, it was correct to punish Pablo’s contact on Raya — whose forearm was held as he tried to come out — but the real problem was the total chaos in the West Ham penalty area: at the same time, there were supposedly at least three other obvious fouls involving pushes, holding and mutual blocks, including Rice’s two-armed shove on Mavropanos.

Hence the newspaper’s provocative reflection: VAR spent five minutes in front of the screens trying to work out “who was fouling whom”, in a situation compared to “a Super Bowl game”.

The Telegraph took the same line, pointing the finger at refereeing inconsistency: it recalled Arsenal’s goal at Old Trafford last August, when Saliba allegedly impeded and “used his elbow” on Altay Bayindir in the move that led to Calafiori’s goal, yet there was no VAR review at all. It wrote: “Inconsistent refereeing is at the heart of the controversy.”

Our own Gianpaolo Calvarese also weighed in, likewise highlighting the inconsistency of the English refereeing line: in the Premier League, similar contacts often go unpunished. For the former referee, however, the main issue remains the endless length of the VAR review: the longer checks drag on in incidents like this, the more controversy and tension inevitably increase (HERE IS HIS VIEW).

The controversy has exploded on social media and promises to rumble on for a long time, with analysis, accusations and endless debate. All of it as the Premier League approaches its final, decisive matchdays: a title race in which, in the end, VAR may have had an enormous and decisive impact.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.

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