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Howard Webb has a phrase for what went wrong at Old Trafford on September 13: tunnel vision. The Pro Ref chief said the VAR team became so fixated on semi-automated offside technology that they missed what was happening right in front of them, a textbook case of offside interference that should have wiped out the only goal in the Manchester derby.
Manchester City beat Manchester United 1-0 thanks to an Erling Haaland strike in the 55th minute. The goal was initially flagged offside by the assistant referee, but VAR reversed that call after semi-automated technology showed Haaland was onside by a razor-thin 3 centimeters. Problem is, nobody in the review booth bothered to look at the bigger picture.
What the VAR team missed
The issue wasn’t Haaland’s position. It was his teammate Enzo Fernandez, who was standing in an offside position when the ball was played.
Fernandez didn’t just loiter there innocuously. According to Webb’s assessment, he dove toward the ball, and his movement impacted United’s defenders and goalkeeper. Under the laws of the game, that constitutes interfering with play from an offside position. The goal should have been chalked off.
VAR Matt Donohue saw the semi-automated system confirm Haaland was onside by those 3 centimeters and effectively stopped looking. Webb described this as a failure to consider the broader context of the play.
Assistant VAR Blake Antrobus, whose job is essentially to be a second pair of eyes catching exactly this kind of oversight, also failed to flag Fernandez’s involvement.
Both officials have been stood down from Premier League duties until after the international break.
Pro Ref’s response
Webb and his team moved quickly to address the fallout. Pro Ref contacted Manchester United within hours of the final whistle, sharing both the audio and video recordings from the VAR review process. Webb noted that the officials involved were “hurting” from the mistake.
The incident also highlights a tension baked into the entire VAR system. Semi-automated offside technology was introduced to remove subjectivity from tight offside calls. But offside interference, judging whether a player in an offside position is affecting the play, remains deeply subjective. What happened at Old Trafford was a case where the objective tool worked perfectly and the subjective judgment failed completely.
A familiar pattern for VAR criticism
The Premier League adopted VAR for the 2019-20 season. In the years since, the system has corrected hundreds of clear errors. It has also generated new ones, often involving the exact kind of subjective calls that technology can’t automate away, including handball in the penalty area, degrees of contact in challenges, and whether an offside player is interfering with play.
Pro Ref has committed to evaluating its officiating processes in light of the derby incident. For Manchester United, the acknowledgment changes nothing on the table. The result stands, and City took three points from Old Trafford.
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