Another setback for Liverpool as star player ruled out for three months 

Another setback for Liverpool as star player ruled out for three months

The first half 2023/24 season can be summarised as “injury” following the way players are being ruled out for weeks because of long-term injuries either while playing for the club or country.

Liverpool is the latest club to be hit with the injury casualty most clubs are experiencing in the Premier League. The manager of the club, Jurgen Klopp confirmed in his pre-match press conference ahead of the Merseyside derby that Andy Robertson will be out for a lengthy period after picking up an injury while representing Scotland.

He said, according to advise from the parties involved on taking the decision is that Robertson should undergo surgery.

“I think the decision we go towards is surgery. There was a little chance that he could try without. But after talking to pretty much all experts, it looks like surgery will be the best thing, especially in the long term, definitely. And that means he is out for a while. Don’t know exactly how long but shoulder surgery is not an easy one. From my experience, you can train pretty quickly again but not football-specific because you
have to be careful, challenges and all these kind of things. So, yeah, he will be out for a while.”

He also confirmed that Cody Gakpo trained with the team but he has not decided if he will be available for the game against Everton.

VAR officials Darren England and Daniel Cook to return to Premier League action this weekend after Liverpool offside error

Darren England was the VAR official when a Luis Diaz goal was incorrectly disallowed for offside; A communication error meant VAR thought the goal was given, before realising it had been ruled out by the on-field referee Simon Hooper.

VAR officials Darren England and Daniel Cook will return to Premier League duty this weekend following their error in last month’s fixture between Tottenham and Liverpool.

 

England and Cook were the VAR and VAR assistant respectively when Liverpool forward Luis Diaz’s goal was incorrectly ruled out for offside against Tottenham.

 

Both officials were stood down the following week, but England will be back as the fourth official for Brentford’s home game against Burnley on Saturday and Cook will return as assistant referee for Sheffield United’s match against Manchester United, live on Sky Sports.

Miscommunication between VAR England and referee Simon Hooper led to Diaz’s goal being wrongly ruled out on September 30.

 

England mistakenly believed the on-field decision had been to award the goal, leading him to tell Hooper that the check was complete.

After England and Cook were alerted to their mistake by the replay operator when the goal wasn’t awarded, they repeatedly said they could not intervene as the game had restarted.

 

“Can’t do anything,” said England as the replay operator asked for the game to be stopped.

PGMOL chief Howard Webb explains why a VAR error was made during Liverpool’s defeat to Spurs, how they will prevent the same mistake from happening again, and why the game couldn’t be stopped

According to Webb, England “lost sight of what the on-field decision was” after going through his processes “pretty quickly”. The referees’ chief insists efficiency is key but “not at the sacrifice of accuracy”.

 

Webb also confirmed that the laws of the game, as set out by FIFA and IFAB, did not allow the officials to intervene and remedy the mistake, although England and Cook did ask themselves that question “when the penny dropped”.

Webb said: “At that point they considered whether they could intervene to stop the game but they recognised that the laws of the game, set by FIFA and the IFAB, doesn’t allow that. There’s obviously a process in place that sits in the laws of the game about how we use VAR to make sure it is delivered consistently throughout every league in the world. And it doesn’t allow you to go back in those circumstances. As such they decided not to intervene.

 

“But I understand why that question was asked and I know that IFAB are, in fact before this incident even happened, I knew that they were going to do a full review of the laws of the game relating to the use of VAR.”

 

Michael Oliver, who was the fourth official at Tottenham vs Liverpool, will referee Manchester United’s visit to Bramall Lane on Saturday.