Regarding The contentious; Newcastle United vs. Crystal Palace match, The former Top Referee Makes Decision

NETSPORT, Dermot Gallagher analyzes contentious Premier League rulings following eFoach round of play.

The incident between Newcastle United against Crystal Palace has finally been called by the former top referee.

The most important lesson I would learn from this “controversial” episode is that it is just one more instance of a ruling that highlights the many benefits of VAR.

Although there is definitely room for improvement in the Premier League’s use of VAR, a lot of people easily overlook how awful things were before to the introduction of VAR. To be honest, listening to them would make you believe that everything was ideal at the time.

Instead, it was an environment that encouraged cheating and other sorts of dishonesty, where there could be large incentives and little penalties. Every game also had an abundance of poor choices, many of them crucial ones. There are currently very few of these crucially incorrect decisions, but every single one of them blows up.

The linesman simply guessed and raised his flag on Saturday, four minutes into the match. Without VAR, Murphy’s goal would have been ruled out and when analysed (if they even bothered) later, it would have just been added to the pile of other wrong decisions that had impacted this and every other match that weekend, with comments of what chance do the match officials have, they are always going to get loads of these split second decisions wrong.

However, due to VAR, Murphy’s goal ended up correctly given and the linesman’s call overruled. That early goal totally wrecked Hodgson’s plans and Palace totally demoralised, allowing Newcastle to go on to batter them. Without that correct overrule and NUFC goal standing, who knows for sure how this match would have turned out?