Shearer slams 'incomprehensible' decision

Alan Shearer has described the decision to disallow Luis Diaz’s goal during Liverpool’s defeat to Tottenham Hotspur as 'incomprehensible'

Speaking on Match of the Day, Shearer said:

“It’s incomprehensible. The one bit of VAR that we have accepted, learnt and can’t argue about is the offside.

“Now this is going to put so much doubt into decisions that have gone on beforehand and in the future because of this.

“It is a monumental error; he is clearly onside. We actually spotted straight away within a second or two that it’s not offside.

“What we’re led to believe is that Darren England, who was in the VAR hub, and Daniel Cook, who was the assistant VAR, they have done all that they should have done in terms of drawing the lines.

“Instead of saying to the referee, Simon Hooper, you need to allow a goal, for some reason, he’s had a huge lapse in concentration and said check complete.

“My argument to that is: What is the point in having an assistant VAR? I’ve worked out there’s about 30-35 seconds to him making the decision and then kick-off.

“It’s a huge error; that’s the VAR [referee] Darren England, by but why can’t Daniel Cook say,

‘Hold on a minute, before you kick-off, we need to stop this rather than going through this process that we’ve made a huge error?’ We could have and should have stopped it before the kick-off.”