Liverpool fans will now be very interested in what VAR secretly did in Chelsea’s latest game

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Officials allowed Chelsea’s game against Burnley on Saturday to restart before fully checking Raheem Sterling’s goal for offside.

After the debacle involving Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur last week, new protocols were put in place this weekend.

Those were supposed to demand greater clarity between on-pitch referees and those in the VAR room. However, according to The Telegraph, it almost failed on its first try.

They report that referee Stuart Atwell allowed the game at Turf Moor to restart before Sterling’s goal had been fully checked. Attwell reportedly blew for the restart after mistakenly thinking he heard VAR Darren Bond say ‘check complete.’ However, Bond had issued no such instruction.

Interestingly, it appears that Atwell was then told to secretly stop the match, while the decision to award Sterling’s goal was clarified. Thankfully, the Chelsea man was onside and the right decision had been – prematurely – reached. Another farce avoided.

VAR makes another error

This goes to show that when Liverpool called for further action to be taken last week, it actually would be to benefit everyone.

There have been reports that other Premier League teams have been getting frustrated with the Reds’ refusal to let the mistake lie.

However, would Burnley, for example, be of the same view had Sterling been offside here?

According to the laws that were enforced at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last week, the game could not have been pulled back to make the right decision.

Instead, Burnley would simply have had to live with the fact that Attwell had mistakenly awarded a goal that was factually offside. We don’t think they’d have been quite so keen to ‘accept and move on’ then. And nor should they be.

The fact that this mistake happened after so much of the spotlight was on the officials this weekend is surely proof that it will happen again.

It perhaps won’t be Liverpool on the wrong end of the next one. But after the pushback they received throughout last week, there’s unlikely to be much sympathy coming from Anfield for whoever bares the brunt.