Matt Donohue and Blake Antrobus will both be watching this weekend's Premier League football like the rest of us. Neither has been given an appointment, three days after the pair sat in the VAR hub and let Erling Haaland's winner at Old Trafford stand.
Pro Ref, the league's refereeing body, has already conceded the goal should not have been awarded the way it was. Howard Webb, its chief refereeing officer, made the call to leave both officials out along with the management team.
What happened on the hour
Haaland turned in Josko Gvardiol's cross at the back post on 60 minutes. The assistant's flag went up for offside and the on-field decision was no goal. VAR looked again, decided Patrick Dorgu's boot had played the Norwegian onside, and the goal was given.
The part nobody at Old Trafford wanted to talk about afterwards was Enzo Fernandez, who was in an offside position in a central area and threw himself at the ball with a diving header before Haaland finished. He did not touch it. That is the whole argument.
Pro Ref's own wording gives the game away
"It was established that Enzo Fernandez did not play the ball and therefore that makes any offside offence subjective," the statement read. "However, on this occasion, the VAR did not recognise the likely impact of his position and should have recommended an on-field review."
Read that twice. Pro Ref is not saying the goal was definitely wrong. It is saying the referee should have been sent to the monitor to decide for himself, and that the VAR took a judgement call out of his hands. That is a process failure rather than a factual one, which is why the sanction is a missed weekend rather than anything heavier.
Wayne Rooney, on punditry duty, called the handling of the decision "baffling". Michael Carrick said it was "worrying". Neither was told anything they did not already suspect.
City won it with ten men anyway
This is the awkward footnote for United supporters still arguing about the offside line. Phil Foden was sent off after 23 minutes. Manchester City played more than an hour a man down, won 1-0, and kept a 100 per cent record from four games. Enzo Maresca even suggested Bruno Fernandes should have walked too.
There is a wider question sitting behind all of this, and the Premier League keeps not answering it: fans still cannot hear the live VAR audio that would settle arguments like this one in thirty seconds. Until that changes, every controversial call gets adjudicated in a statement three days late, and the only visible punishment is a referee being quietly left off a team sheet.
Incident context: Manchester United 0-1 Manchester City, Old Trafford, Sunday 13 September 2026. Haaland scored on 60 minutes; Foden was sent off on 23. VAR Matt Donohue and AVAR Blake Antrobus have no Premier League appointment for the weekend of 19-20 September.
0 Comments