'Not unreasonable' to disallow Liverpool goal - Webb

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Updated / Wednesday, 12 Nov 2025 08:36 Andrew Robertson ducked as his Liverpool team-mate Virgil van Dijk's header was on its way to the net Referees’ chief Howard Webb said the decision to rule out Virgil van Dijk’s header during Liverpool’s defeat at Manchester City on Sunday was "not unreasonable". Liverpool contacted Webb, the Professional Game Match Officials Limited’s chief refereeing officer, on Monday to raise concerns about the interpretation of the offside rules after Van Dijk's header was disallowed by referee Chris Kavanagh..

Andy Robertson was clearly in an offside position when he ducked under the ball, but Liverpool argued he was not in goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma’s line of vision and so did not interfere with play. But while Webb said decisions on whether a player is interfering with play or not are "some of the most subjective decisions that we have to make", he felt the match officials made the right decision.

But Webb added: "Once they’ve made that onfield decision, the job of the VAR is to look at that and decide was the outcome of offside clearly and obviously wrong? "The VAR determines that the outcome of offside is not clearly and obviously wrong and they stay out of it." More stories on Read Next