VAR Error in Manchester Derby: Speed vs Accuracy
“Quick, quick, quick, quick! Go, go, go, go, go!”
In the bowels of Stockley Park, those were the words of video assistant referee Matt Donohue as he hurtled through the check that would rubber-stamp Erling Haaland’s winning goal in the Manchester derby.
He thought he was being efficient. Instead, he helped create one of the most calamitous VAR errors the Premier League has seen.
Enzo Fernandez stood three yards offside when the cross came in, clearly ahead of the defensive line before he tried to head the ball. Donohue and his assistant VAR, Blake Antrobus, somehow didn’t spot it. The goal stood. Manchester City beat Manchester United 1-0. And the debate over what VAR has become exploded all over again.
Speed over certainty
Refereeing has always lived in a goldfish bowl. VAR simply made the bowl smaller and the lights brighter.
This season, the Premier League baked a “more efficient application of VAR to reduce delays” into its football principles. Faster checks, fewer stoppages, slicker broadcasts. That was the idea.
So has the game pushed too hard on speed and loosened its grip on accuracy?
The urgency in Donohue’s voice told its own story.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
This wasn’t the calm, forensic review fans have been promised. It sounded frantic. A VAR and replay operator racing through a process that is supposed to be slow, cold and methodical.
Officials hear it constantly – from fans, pundits, phone-ins, columns – VAR must be quicker. Long delays are branded unacceptable. In the Premier League stakeholders’ survey, which canvasses managers, coaches and supporters, the headline demand on VAR was simple: speed up.
That pressure seeps into the room. It always will. But it does not excuse missing an offside by several yards in one of the league’s showpiece fixtures.
City head coach Enzo Maresca, beneficiary of the blunder, still sounded a note of sympathy on Wednesday.
“To make a decision in 10, 20 seconds is not easy for them,” he said. “Sometimes they make mistakes. I make mistakes, players make mistakes. It’s part of our job.”
Howard Webb, the referees’ chief, has tried to respond to the clamour for quicker calls. On the numbers, it has worked. VAR delays, including the referee’s stadium announcement, have dropped from an average of 46 seconds per game last season to 36 seconds this term.
But the only other acknowledged VAR error this season – the failure to award Arsenal a penalty at Aston Villa – also came from an incident cleared too fast.
The pattern is hard to ignore.
The moment it went wrong
The derby error did not begin with the rush through the final phase. The critical mistake came a beat earlier.
As Josko Gvardiol delivered the cross, Donohue asked the replay operator to freeze the first replay at the moment of contact with the ball. From there, he jumped straight into the semi-automated offside technology.
That is not how the process should work.
The VAR team should first scan the whole attacking sequence – from the cross, through any challenges or headers, to Haaland’s finish. That broader view would have flagged Fernandez’s position and involvement inside the box.
They didn’t do that. They narrowed the lens too quickly. By the time they focused on the penalty area, they were fixated on a single question: did Fernandez touch the ball? If he had, it would have started a new phase and left Haaland offside.
In that tunnel vision, the obvious earlier offside from Fernandez was lost.
Donohue has taken most of the public heat. Yet Antrobus’ role, or lack of one, was just as significant.
As assistant VAR, his job is to provide friction – to challenge, to double-check, to spot what the lead VAR might have missed. Across the entire review, his only recorded contribution was a hurried “no, yeah” about a possible touch by Fernandez, spoken one second before Donohue declared: “final decision is goal, check complete”.
The safety net simply wasn’t there.
The shadow of a four-minute check
Antrobus’ recent history adds another layer. The only long VAR delay in the Premier League this season came in Brentford v Sunderland, when a Dan Ballard goal was disallowed for a subjective offside against Kevin Danso.
That check took more than four minutes. Antrobus was AVAR that day as well. The length of the delay drew heavy criticism in some quarters.
Did that experience sit in the back of his mind on derby day, nudging him away from another prolonged intervention? Only he will know.
The irony is stark. In that Brentford game, Antrobus played a crucial role in guiding VAR Tim Wood towards the correct offside decision against Danso. Time-consuming, yes. But accurate.
There was another pair of eyes in play on Sunday too. The support VAR, stationed in the operations room next to the match hub at Stockley Park, can step in on matters of protocol. They saw the review unfolding. They did not intervene.
Even after the on-field decision, the situation was still salvageable. The window between the goal being scored and the restart of play offers one last chance to catch a serious mistake. No one took it.
Specialists under strain
Pro Ref has poured money, training and technology into VAR, trying to make it both slick and watertight. Yet when a failure of this size hits, none of that investment softens the blow.
Calls to create VAR specialists have grown louder. On paper, that is exactly what Donohue is.
Three seasons ago, Pro Ref invited referees to apply for a dedicated video role. Candidates went through aptitude tests; around 15 reached the final training stages, and 10 have since worked as VARs in the Premier League.
Donohue is one of them. Sunday was his 65th match as the video official. His progress has been strong enough to earn a place on the international list, with appointments to Uefa club competition qualifying ties over the summer.
He has made errors – almost every VAR has – but his record has been solid enough to climb the ladder. Across the last two seasons, only Nick Hopton and Neil Davies, also products of the accelerated VAR programme, have gone without a clear mistake.
Convincing referees to give up the whistle and commit their careers to a dark room full of screens is not easy. Nor does it guarantee success.
Lee Mason and Mike Dean, the Premier League’s only full-time VARs appointed after retirement, both lost their roles under Webb after a string of high-profile errors.
Spain offers another warning. La Liga and its second division use a full team of officials who only ever act as VARs, never as on-pitch referees. The controversies there are just as fierce. At the start of last season, VAR failed to spot that a goalscorer was offside when the ball was played. Different league, same arguments.
Football’s obsession with haste
Pro Ref will now face uncomfortable questions. Why was a VAR in such a hurry during one of the biggest games of the season? Why did the checks and balances fail at every level?
Those questions didn’t arise when West Ham’s stoppage-time equaliser against Arsenal was chalked off last season. That review dragged on for more than four minutes. The outcome was correct. The delay was painful, but the process worked.
The derby has flipped the conversation. The obsession with shaving seconds off reviews now threatens to undermine everything built behind the scenes.
That feels less like a single official’s meltdown and more like a sport wrestling with its own impatience. How long before someone in power finally admits that, when the margins are this fine and the stakes this high, “quick, quick, quick” might be the most dangerous phrase in the game?
