Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou has admitted his side would not have allowed Liverpool to score unchallenged after Luis Diaz’ goal was wrongly disallowed for offside.
Spurs defeated the Reds in a controversial 2-1 victory when the game was marred by a VAR decision to disallow a first half goal from Luis Diaz for offside. The goal, which would have put the Reds ahead, was incorrectly ruled offside by assistant referee Adrian Holmes.
Bungling VAR duo Darren England and Dan Cook judged the Colombian to be onside but mistakenly believed that referee Simon Hooper had awarded the goal, and a subsequent communication failure meant Hooper upheld the linesman’s decision.
Liverpool also suffered two controversial red cards in the game, before conceding a 96th minute winner through a Joel Matip own goal.
In the days following the controversial game, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp said a replay between the teams would be a fair decision, while ex-Red turned pundit Stephen Warnock said Hooper should have directed Tottenham to let Liverpool score after the mistake.
However, Postecoglou denied his side would allow their opponents to score an uncontested goal during a press conference ahead of Spurs’ Premier League game against Luton Town.
“I just don’t see that, if we want managers to be the arbiters of these kind of things. We’ve got pretty hefty responsibilities at our football clubs but we’re not the custodians.
“I wouldn’t make a decision that could potentially send a club down on the back of what my beliefs are,” the Australian said.
“In that moment, if somebody could tell me that they could explain everything that went on within the prism of 30 seconds…. I have to make a decision and it wasn’t going to happen.
“It’s different if it’s something clear. It was a bad error through a lack of communication but it wasn’t something that was easily explainable. If it was easily explainable, I would assume there would have been [less] uproar than there was.”
The Australian, who had led Spurs to an unbeaten start to the season with five wins and two draws in their opening seven fixtures, said errors are a part of football and will continue to occur unless the sport “explains every decision”.
He said: “We want an errorless, faultless system that doesn’t exist and will never exist, unless we want to turn our game into an event that goes for four hours while we’re explaining every decision.”
The 58-year-old also expressed sympathy for Darren England and Dan Cook who were in charge of VAR during the game as they’ve since been dropped for the this weekend’s round of Premier League fixtures due to their error.
He said: “I don’t know if that’s been decided. I’d be surprised if they have gone that way. It’s a significant error but it’s a human being that’s made that error. I don’t think that there’s anything that needs to go too far reaching.”
