Liverpool demand audio of conversations between referee and VAR leaving Premier League rivals fuming at approach
LIVERPOOL have demanded the audio of the conversations between ref Simon Hooper and VAR Darren England after their wrongly-disallowed goal at Spurs.
In the latest ratcheting up of their campaign against PGMOL chiefs, the Anfield club made the “formal request” for the full audio recording of the discussions between the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Stockley Park in the aftermath of the incident.
It comes after Liverpool said there was a “clear need for escalation and resolution” over the catalogue of mistakes that led to Luis Diaz’ strike being ruled out.
But Liverpool’s antagonistic approach has raised the hackles of Prem rivals who are privately accusing the Merseysiders of attempting to corral officials to give them the benefit of the doubt in future matches.
Club chiefs know that neither PGMOL nor Prem chiefs can respond to Liverpool’s attack on the refs’ body without pouring oil on the flames, giving the Anfield outfit a “free hit”.
There is, though, growing disquiet at the feeling that Liverpool are putting pressure on future referees rather than accepting they were on the wrong end of a dreadful decision.
It is understood that refs’ boss Howard Webb – who apologised to Liverpool for the error on Saturday evening – is keen to demonstrate that this was a significant cock-up rather than a conspiracy.
League chiefs, though, feel that the full review process – including potential changes in the communications between VARs and referees that might prevent a recurrence – needs to be completed before the audio recording is made available.
Former Prem ref Dermot Gallagher, the unofficial voice of PGMOL, told Sky Sports News that the decision was “the wrong call, 100 per cent” but was simply “a mistake, a very bad mistake, but that was it”.
He added: “The only thing I can say is that we have to learn from it.
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“There’s no way this can ever happen again.”
It was believed that England had informed Hooper of his error when the ball next went out of play, meaning that there was nothing the referee could do to make amends.
Gallagher, though, insisted: “I’ve been assured that at no point did he tell the referee he had made a mistake.
“The referee did not know from minute 34 to half-time that he had made a mistake.”