Ange Postecoglou Hedges Liverpool VAR Controversy Questions in Press Conference

Ange Postecoglou chose to sit on the fence when asked about Liverpool’s recent VAR controversies that occurred in their 2-1 defeat to Spurs.

Postecoglou got asked if Darren England should be banned from refereeing in future Liverpool matches:

“I don’t know if that’s actually been decided. I’d be surprised if they have gone that way. It’s a significant error but it’s a human being that’s made the error. I don’t think there’s anything that needs to go too far-reaching.

“We need to make sure what happened doesn’t happen again.

“Don’t ask managers and players about the rules of the game. We don’t know half of them. Referees do. We shouldn’t be commenting because if a referee commented on the tactics of a game, we’d all be jumping up and down.

“We’ve got to respect their position. Mistakes are part of our game. It’s not supposed to be flawless.

“When I listened to that audio, saying ‘check complete’… somebody obviously thought that’s a good way of finalising things. The logical thing to say would be ‘goal for Liverpool’ but I’m saying that with ignorance of not really knowing how it’s set up.

“But when you listen to that, there’s probably better ways of communicating a clear decision and I hope that’s what they’re addressing, rather than the individual that made the mistake.

“That would be a dereliction of the game. That’s like me hanging out a player and saying ‘you’re never playing again’.”

Postecoglou said at the time of the VAR Diaz goal intervention, it didn’t seem significant at the time:

“It’s a little bit of a weird one because usually when something happens you get a sense of it during the game.  I didn’t and I don’t think anyone did have a sense that something significant had happened.

“Whatever I say is maybe going to be seen through the prism of us being the beneficiaries of the mistake.  It wasn’t an integrity issue. It wasn’t a misappropriation of the law. It was an error in communication.

“It’s never happened before but we’re in a new space with technology. We want a faultless system that will never exist, unless we want our game like other codes, where the event goes on for four hours and we’re explaining every decision.”

Leading on from that answer, Postecoglou was asked whether he would have allowed Liverpool to score if he knew it was a VAR error:

“I just don’t see that. If we want managers to be the arbiters of these kind of things… we’ve got pretty hefty responsibilities at our football clubs but we’re not the custodians.

“I wouldn’t make a decision that could potentially send a club down on the back of what my beliefs are.

“In that moment, if somebody could tell me that they could explain everything that went on within the prism of 30 seconds… I have to make a decision and it wasn’t going to happen.

“It’s different if it’s something clear. It was a bad error through a lack of communication but it wasn’t something that was easily explainable.

“If it was easily explainable, I would assume there would have been more uproar than there was.”

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