Former Manchester City defender Micah Richards believes the integrity of the competition prevented Leeds United from facing Arsenal without VAR on Sunday. The game had to be stopped for around 40 minutes just 70 seconds after kicking off due to a powercut at Elland Road.
Referee Chris Kavanagh spoke to both managers about the possibility of playing without it, but in the end decided to suspend the game until the issue was eventually fixed. Arguably, that turned out to be the correct choice after an incident-packed second half in which VAR was consulted on three key decisions.
Speaking on BBC 5Live, Richards was debating with fellow pundit Chris Sutton on why the game could not have just been played without technology. “As far as I’m concerned, if both managers agree they want to just crack on and play, just get on with and accept what’s going to happen,” Sutton said.
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“There maybe an incident that is viewed further down the line, maybe a ball doesn’t go over the line, but if both managers agree on behalf of the clubs then what’s the issue? That was ridiculous what happened.”
Richards then went onto partially agree with Sutton’s point but explained how it may ruin the fairness of the competition if one game was able to go ahead without VAR and the rest did. He said: “I am with you Chris but if the technology is not working, and there is a big incident, we’ve talked about it.
“Look at the VAR decision in Man City vs Liverpool, what if there was one of the moments, goal line technology, what would we do in that situation? Is that a fair competition then because one game didn’t have it and the rest did?”
Sutton then acknowledged that view, but offered a potential solution for if a similar issues arises again. He said: “I think the issue is for example if Leeds got awarded a goal and they stayed up by a point, there’s going to be issues from other clubs but surely there should be some ruling within the game in place which says, ‘in the event of VAR breaking down then if both managers agree then get on with it.’”
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