VAR Donohue returns to PL after Haaland derby error — SkimNews
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- Matt Donohue has been reinstated to Premier League duty as assistant VAR for Coventry vs Fulham on Saturday, his first top-flight assignment since the September 13 Manchester derby at Old Trafford.
- Pro Referee (Pro Ref) contacted Manchester United to acknowledge an 'error of judgement,' conceding the VAR should have recommended an on-field review rather than letting Haaland's 59th-minute finish stand.
- Howard Webb, Pro Ref's chief refereeing officer, said Donohue developed 'tunnel vision' by fixating on whether Haaland was onside and added the rest of his VAR team should have pulled him out of it.
- Enzo Fernandez was offside and diving toward the cross, with his movement visibly impeding Lisandro Martinez's defending before Haaland's back-post tap-in — the interference the VAR crew failed to assess.
- Donohue has officiated two EFL Championship matches since the derby (Derby vs Wrexham on October 10 and Southampton vs Bolton), while Antrobus returned as an assistant referee for Newcastle vs Aston Villa.
- Sky Sports pundits Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Micah Richards and Roy Keane all said the decision was wrong, with Keane arguing United were 'punished for holding a good line' by Fernandez's interference.
Why it matters: Webb's own diagnosis of 'tunnel vision' exposes a wider protocol failure — the VAR team's backup layer didn't catch what the lead missed. Semi-automated offside technology correctly cleared Haaland by three centimetres, but the human check on Fernandez's interference slipped through every checkpoint, raising fresh questions about whether marginal subjective calls can be reliably caught by the current VAR setup.
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