Sunderland were awarded a controversial penalty in their 2-0 loss to Arsenal earlier this month
Sunderland should not have been awarded a penalty in their 2-0 defeat to Arsenal, the Premier League’s Key Match Incident Panel has judged.
However, the panel also voted by a narrow majority that VAR was right not to intervene and recommend a review of the decision as it did not meet the threshold for a ‘clear and obvious error’. Arsenal and boss Mikel Arteta were left incensed by the decision to award a penalty when Ezri Konsa was ruled to have committed a holding offence against Dan Ballard from a Sunderland long throw, even though Enzo Le Fée’s penalty was superbly saved by David Raya and the visitors went on to win the game.
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Arteta argued that Ballard had been holding Konsa, and that a penalty should therefore not have been awarded. The panel agreed with this but did not support a VAR intervention. All five judges felt the penalty award was incorrect, but a 3:2 majority voted in favour of not overturning the decision.
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The report from the Key Match Incident Panel reads: “The non-VAR intervention was supported, by three votes to two, with the majority considering that the on-field decision was not a clear and obvious error, given the combined actions from both players.
“Panellists assess the Referee’s decision first, before considering the VAR’s actions. It is also important to note that the Premier League operates with a high threshold for VAR intervention.
“In this instance, the panel concluded that, although the Referee made an error and should not have awarded a penalty kick, the decision did not meet the threshold for a clear and obvious error. Therefore, it was not deemed a situation in which the VAR should have intervened.”
The five-person independent panel is made up of three former players or coaches, one representative from ProRef and one from the Premier League. They meet each week to analyse significant decisions made in Premier League games and feed back to the game's refereeing body on how they feel top-tier games should be officiated.
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