Liverpool have complained to referees’ chiefs about Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed goal at Manchester City on Sunday.
The Premier League champions were well beaten and Arne Slot did not blame the decision for his side’s defeat. But he was left wondering what might have been if his captain’s header, which would have made the game 1-1, was allowed to stand.
Instead it was chalked off after a VAR review due to Andrew Robertson, the Liverpool left back, being on the line and judged to be interfering with City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Scotsman was offside and ducked out of the way of Van Dijk’s effort.
Law 11 of the Football Association handbook states that a player in an offside position is ‘only penalised on becoming involved in active play by: interfering with play by playing or touching a ball passed or touched by a team-mate…’
It continues: ‘…or interfering with an opponent by: preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision; or challenging an opponent for the ball; or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball.’
Daily Mail Sport understands Liverpool have been in contact with PGMO, the refereeing body led by former man in the middle Howard Webb, this morning to question the decision to penalise Robertson.
The Reds do not accept the premise that the decision was arrived at for subjective reasons. The wording of law 11, they believe, is criteria based. Therefore, Liverpool have asked PGMOL to clarify which elements of said criteria have been met.
Liverpool do not accept that Donnarumma was impeded by the presence of Robertson and the Scotland captain was not in the goalkeeper’s line of vision. The club has spent time reviewing footage from multiple angles.
Speaking after the 3-0 defeat, Slot said a ‘clear and obvious error’ had denied his side pulling level in the first half, though the Dutchman was reluctant to blame that decision for the defeat.
The Liverpool boss said: ‘He didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do.
‘Immediately after the game someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed – City against Wolves last season (when Bernardo Silva was on the line for a John Stones header).
‘So it took the linesman 13 seconds to raise his flag to say it was offside. So there was clearly communication, but as I said that (goal) could have influenced the game in a positive way for us.
‘I would like to emphasise the fact that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went.
‘This can happen in football. For me it was a wrong decision that this goal was not allowed, but I will not say because of that we lost the game.
‘After 1-1, if City kept on playing like they did then we would have struggled as well.’
