Alan Shearer furious with VAR after what happened during West Ham United clash v Southampton
Alan Shearer was furious with how long VAR took to allow Nayef Aguerd’s opening goal as West Ham beat Southampton on Sunday (2 April).
The Hammers took the lead midway through the first half thanks to the Moroccan defender’s header, but the players had to wait over three minutes for VAR to confirm the goal after a check for offside.
With images showing that Aguerd was quite clearly onside for the goal, this sparked fury online with the Premier League all-time top scorer taking to his social media account to question what was happening.
“Wtf is going on VAR?” he wrote on his personal Twitter (2 April).
The Hammers held on for all three points to move out of the relegation zone and up to 14th place in the table with a game in hand over the teams around them.
Crazy
The linesman flagging for offside was somewhat understandable because there was a big cluster of players in the box for the free-kick and it may have been a close call.
But the images and footage immediately showed Aguerd was quite comfortably onside, while Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek were offside but didn’t interfere with play
It should have been a very simple and easy decision to make, with lines quickly drawn on to confirm and the goal to be given.
However it completely stopped all momentum that may have been built from the goal and took away the feeling inside the stadium, and it’s just not what VAR was brought in to do.
It was the right decision in the end for the goal to be given, but it was absurd that it took that long and it’s no surprise that people weren’t happy about it despite them getting to the correct call eventually.