Liverpool eyes were always going to be on Arsenal vs Manchester City. Despite a somewhat disappointing draw with Brighton, Jürgen Klopp will still consider these two sides his direct competition for the campaign, in what is a distinct improvement on last season.
A draw was probably the preferred result, but defeat for Pep Guardiola was a close second, with Liverpool slip-ups now not directly punished by Manchester City in successive weeks. Of course, that’s a rather positive spin on what feels a lot like missed opportunities — especially in the case of the Spurs shambles — but the Reds head into the international break very much in touch at the top of the table.
But if the result pleases Liverpool, one incident in the game will baffle Klopp and his side. Much like in the Spurs match, a key talking point came midway through the first half, when a visiting midfielder steamed in with an overzealous challenge.
Surely, most would agree that Mateo Kovačić’s tackle was worse than that of Curtis Jones. Whereas the Liverpool man’s foot effectively slipped over the ball to end in an unfortunate position on Yves Bissouma, the Manchester City summer arrival ploughed directly into Martin Ødegaard, planting studs on his ankle.
Liverpool fans who had complaints about the still image of Jones’ final position being shown to Simon Hooper on the VAR monitor were assured that this is simply because it was the most compelling evidence to support an intervention. Wherever an ankle is effectively bent, it was said, a red card will these days always follow.
Yet Ødegaard suffered the same fate. Once we were told a VAR check was in play, it seemed there could only be one outcome.
However, Michael Oliver — incidentally, another of those to have gone on a jaunt to the UAE, and the fourth official in Liverpool’s game against Spurs — was not sent to the monitor. The VAR was satisfied that the decision did not need to be upgraded to a red card.
All in all, there’s a fair case that was the right decision. It was probably a red-card offence, but was it a clear and obvious error to show a yellow? This rather opaque standard has meant the VAR era has been one of significantly more inconsistency than before it was introduced.
And that, for Liverpool, has to be the biggest problem. Jones is missing for three games, with an appeal determining that VAR was not wrong to intervene and show him a red. Yet in the very next week, a similar (and worse) challenge was ignored. Nor is there any real hope of consistency meaningfully improving, with the whole concept of determining grounds for review needlessly introducing another wave of subjectivity.
For all the talk of ‘The Rules’ and how they are sacrosanct, apparently to the point where there was ‘nothing’ Darren England could do to go back and award Liverpool a valid goal, there seems to be precious little consensus on what these rules are — or at least, how they should be applied. Particularly when it comes to the bar for intervention, we are essentially left to the discretion (whim?) of whoever happens to be in Stockley Park.
This is not about a Liverpool agenda against Manchester City. Arsenal won anyway, for one thing. This is a far bigger conversation about the pitfalls of VAR that can affect any and every team.
But with the Premier League now on hiatus, the VAR talk will presumably have died down by the time the action returns, with a serious conversation about technology’s place in the game still not really on the agenda. So on the whole, Klopp and Liverpool will gratefully accept this result, ready to regroup on the other side of the international break and get back to building a title bid.
