Liverpool Penalty Fury: Alexander Isak Shirt Pull Leaves PGMOL Facing More Questions

Liverpool lost to Arsenal on Sunday, but the main fallout has little to do with tactics, shape or game management. It is about a decision that looked obvious in real time, looked worse on replay and now leaves PGMOL staring at another familiar problem, credibility. Alexander Isak had his shirt pulled by Jurrien Timber as he attacked a first-half cross. Andy Madley did not give the penalty. Stuart Attwell, on VAR duty, also waved it through. Between them, they had the pitch view, the replay angles and enough time to sort it out. They still got it wrong. That is the issue. Referees miss things. That happens. VAR exists to clean up the clear and obvious errors. When a player is being held for long enough to stop his movement in the box, and the video team still does nothing, the system has failed exactly where it is supposed to help.

Alexander Isak incident sums up VAR problem

Virgil van Dijk made his feelings clear at full-time and the reaction since has gone in the same direction. There has been little serious defence of the decision. The debate has moved beyond whether it was a foul and onto how officials, with all the available technology, could watch it and still decide there was nothing wrong. Some Arsenal supporters have tried to balance the argument by pointing to Trey Nyoni’s early challenge on Martin Odegaard, suggesting Liverpool were fortunate to keep 11 men on the pitch. That line does not hold much weight here. Former referee Dermot Gallagher has already said Nyoni should not have been sent off. In other words, one call appears correct, the other plainly does not. And that second one mattered. Isak was challenging for a goalscoring opportunity, his shirt was being pulled for a sustained period, and the officials ignored it. This is not forensic interpretation. It is basic refereeing.

Steven Gerrard tears into officiating

Steven Gerrard was in no mood to soften the verdict. Speaking after the game, he said: “You could definitely see that there was something there. From where I was sitting it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t sitting there thinking to myself ‘that’s a pen, a definite pen,’ but the crowd reaction, you’re going off it wondering if there’s something there.” He then got to the heart of it. “The speed of the cross and how it happened and the reaction, you can understand how a referee could possibly miss that or think there’s not much in that, but for someone to sit in, I don’t know what they sit in at the moment, with all these screens. How you miss that in that VAR seat is an absolute embarrassment.” That is blunt, and hard to argue with. Gerrard added: “There’s no excuse for it is there really. I’d be saying the same if this was anyone. To hold someone’s shirt for that long and to have three or four opportunities to see that and slow it down and the amount of cameras that are in stadiums at the moment. It’s really poor from Stuart Attwell.”

"An absolute embarrassment!" 😱

Steven Gerrard didn’t hold back on the decision not to award Liverpool a penalty.

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PGMOL apology would solve nothing for Liverpool

Liverpool may yet receive the standard follow-up, acknowledgement of error, private regret, maybe a quiet apology. Fine. It changes nothing. The points are gone, the result stands and Arsenal move on. There was also discussion around Andoni Iraola’s view that Isak may have needed to go down to force a decision. Gerrard was right to reject that logic. “You can’t win in that situation,” he said. “You try to make it more dramatic to try and convince the referee and then people say you’re cheating. In this day and age with the amount of cameras and technology we’ve got, you shouldn’t have to make the most of anything, especially if someone’s sitting there watching it. “They should know that that was a clear pull for a length of time to stop you getting on the end of a cross which was a goalscoring opportunity. It’s a penalty. Mikel Arteta said after the game that they rode their luck at times and I think he’s alluding to that incident.” Arteta later said he had not seen the incident. That part is irrelevant. The people paid to see it did see it, or should have done. Liverpool have every right to be angry. This was a penalty, VAR missed it, and there is no sensible way around that.