Brentford’s equaliser against Arsenal in the Premier League on Saturday, was not chalked off after it was revealed that Video Assistant Referee (VAR) official Lee Mason forgot to draw the lines that would have shown Christian Norgaard was offside in the build-up to Ivan Toney’s goal.
Gunners boss, Mikel Arteta, was left raging when Leandro Trossard’s first goal for his new club was cancelled out after the officials made two errors while reviewing the incident which prevented the Gunners from opening up an eight point lead at the top of the table.
Mason took three minutes to adjudge that Ethan Pinnock was not interfering with play by blocking Gabriel Magalhaes from getting to the ball initially, a decision disputed by Arteta after the game.
‘The action when you get blocked when you are offside,’ said the Arsenal manager. ‘You cannot block if you are offside.
‘Looking at the images, you have to apply certain principles in defending and you do that by sticking to the rules and suddenly you apply different rules then you have to change your principles.
‘So tell us before because then you don’t hold the line that high because you’re always going to have an advantage if you get blocked.’
Mason then compounded that error by greenlighting Toney’s header by forgetting to check whether Norgaard had strayed beyond Ben White, Arsenal’s last man, before he prodded the ball into the path of Brentford’s top scorer.