Should Tottenham vs Liverpool be replayed following the VAR error?

But we're going to start with the story that continues to dominate the agenda and has been ever since Saturday, that VAR controversy in the Spurs-Liverpool game. Now, if you were with us last night, we played you the audio of the moment the VAR officials realised they had mistakenly disallowed Luis Diaz's goal. Today, the Liverpool boss, Jürgen Klopp, has spoken out on what should happen next. They didn't do that on purpose, and we should not forget that. Yes, it was a mistake, an obvious mistake, and I think there would have been solutions for it afterwards. If not, and I can say immediately, probably some people don't want me to say this, but not as a manager of Liverpool, so much more as a football person. I think the only outcome should be a replay, that's how it is, probably will not happen. The argument against that will probably be if we open that gate, then everybody will ask for it. I think the situation is that unprecedented that it didn't happen before, in that moment. And we're all used, I'm 56 years old and I'm since 50 years in football, and I'm absolutely used. I don't deal always well with it, but I'm used to wrong decisions, difficult decisions, all these kinds of things. But something like that, as far as I can remember, never happened. That's why I think a replay would be the right thing. And again, the argument would be if it would happen again, I think a replay would be the right thing to do, or the ref has the opportunity to bring both coaches together and say, sorry, we made a mistake, but we can sort it. Let Liverpool score a goal and we start from there. There we go, Jürgen Klopp speaking earlier on, let's see what our panel make of it. Tim, he says the game should be replayed, should it? No, it's never going to be replayed. The can of worms there, unfortunately. We all know it was a poor decision. They're human in there at the VAR. I think that since Howard's gone in there, he's been quite vocal, just apologising. When you see him apologising, he likes to front it up, but we need to get it improved. I believe that they were starting that, as and from last night. I was in the Premier League, I was doing the game, the looting game last night, and I think there's more detail regarding the checks. When the check is complete, rather than just check complete, it was actually what they were looking at, possible penalty, check complete. So I think there's more detail helping out. More information is only going to help. I think that since Howard's been in there, I've listened to him talking about we need to speed up the process of getting these decisions right. I don't think that's right. I think we need to get the decisions correct. It's not about how quick we get that decision out, it's about how correct we get the decision. If you're a manager, I think once that ball goes out of play on that incident at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, I think they should have halted it. I know they're going to say it's not in the laws of the game, we cannot do that, we can't go back. If they would have gone over to Agnes Postacoglou and said, look, there's been a huge error here, after one minute of the game, I think he would have said, OK, you've got to do what's right, give the goal to Liverpool. But they didn't do that, because common sense didn't prevail. It was just the laws of the game, written in stone, and we stuck with that. Gary, Klopp said in that press conference that because it's so unprecedented what happened, it shouldn't be compared to other errors, and therefore he doesn't think it would open a can of worms, as Tim said then. If it was replayed, just theoretically, if it was, are we then going to have clubs demanding replays every time there's an issue of human error? Is it really going to come to that? Well, I think you're going to get that, aren't you? I think they're going to be the challengers. I mean, I can think back to the Championship play-off final. I think it was Huddersfield v Forest when there were two, to me, looked like two stonewall penalties. It went to VAR, and neither of them were given. So would that open a can of worms for someone like Huddersfield to say, we've lost potentially hundreds of millions of pounds in revenue, and it looked like an obvious error? I think that's the challenge, isn't it? I think that's the challenge. I think we all, when VAR came in, I think we all accepted that it may be to lose some of the spontaneous nature of football, which none of us liked, I would imagine. But if you got more decisions right, and if you got a lot of the big decisions right, then it was kind of acceptable. At the moment, we still kind of feel like we're a little bit in between somewhere, don't we? But, you know, yeah, it's a difficult one. What do you think, Rob? To replay or not to replay? You can't replay because this is not the first goal that was a genuine goal that was not given. And exactly like Gary said, you do start to go back. I probably would have had another hundred goals that were disallowed. But the key thing is you can't replay it because it does open up, because pretty much when you go through the course of the season, you're going to have so many games, so many goals, so many decisions, where there's a decision from VAR or the ref, and it's completely seen in a different way from one of the coaches, both of the coaches. And then you all of a sudden, every single game is going to become way worse. But you can't replay it. I don't think so. And I think Jurgen Klopp would be OK if it wasn't replayed. I think you'd feel much better if there was more consistency in what's happening with the VAR, with the refs. And the worry for the Premier League is a lot of the Premier League teams decided not to, at the start of the season, decided not to allow or go with the automated VAR, which is used in the Champions League, which looks way better. And for me, from the beginning, I've never liked VAR because you do lose the spontaneity of football, the goal celebrations. Every player now, you automatically see every player and every fan now almost lose that moment that we all go to a football game for, that moment when a team scores a goal or a goal's gone in. It's almost like a pause of, oh, we'll wait. And that's not football. That's not the pureness of why we all love football. We all love football because there's going to be a goal scored. It doesn't matter who for, but there's the event, there's the goals that we come for that are lost. And I think we're losing the main thing about football. You've got to keep the main thing about football. Yes, have the refs, yes, have them make the right decision, but it has to be the right decision if the VAR works very well. Otherwise, scrap it. It's kept us busy for the last couple of days. Anyway, that's for sure. That's for sure. Alan, put yourself in Jurgen Klopp's position. After what happened at the weekend, he's heard the audio, he's faced the media today. Would you have said what he said today? Yeah, probably, because you want to have a chance to get those three points back. They're massive three points. I disagree with Rob on one point because I think I agree with the three guys that it can't be replayed. I think you are bringing the game into a real dangerous area if you do that. But he said Klopp wouldn't be unhappy if he sees consistency in the VAR. He's definitely unhappy. Definitely. And he will be unhappy if he doesn't get to replay that game. For sure. And of course, he'll lean on that, as a manager would. My point, since I see it, was bad procedure, bad management of VAR at the moment. And they need to really look at that and get that right. And I don't know if it's next Monday that Howard Webb comes and kind of talks people through what actually happened. But he needs to get a process that that can never happen again. That's the answer. Yeah, and obviously, they put the statement out last night with the key learnings. And we've already addressed a lot of those last night and tonight. Dan, I want to give you the final word on this. I've got everyone else's take on it. Do you think the game should be replayed? Not in the slightest. What was it, Villa-Chef United? Yeah. Where there was a goal which was... We talk about black and white decisions. That was a goal. Hawkeye. Yeah, that was a goal. Simple as that. There's been 12 apologies for massive decisions that got wrong. None of those have been replayed. I think he's using it to maybe play the sorry card. Maybe get a little bit of sympathy from referees in the next few games, whatever that might be. You cannot play this game again. Alan's right. The procedure is awful. It's absolutely shocking. How long have we had VAR now? Four, five, six years? Even though the procedure is not right at this point in time, that's the biggest joke of the whole thing. Rugby get it perfectly. All they say is the on-field decision is goal. Is there any reason I cannot give the goal? Then it doesn't matter if there's shambles what was said last night. And there can be 100 voices. You then end it with, yes, you can give the goal. No, you can't give the goal. That's it. That should have been in from day one. And Howard Webb's responsible for that. He's been in long enough now. That procedure should be right. And that eradicates it all. Yes. And that's obviously what came through the statement last night, that they are very, very keen that this does not happen again. Should just point out that Sky Sports News understands the Premier League have not received a formal request from Liverpool for a replay, despite what Klopp said in his press conference today. And if they were to get such a request, it would be rejected out of hand, with nothing in the Premier League rules allowing for that to happen. So that is the line this afternoon.