In Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Brentford, the VAR review took three minutes and resulted in the hosts’ penalty against Leeds being overturned.
Referee John Brooks pointed to the spot, ruling that Dango Ouattara was pulled back by Gabriel Gudmundsson. Eventually the penalty was cancelled as Ouattara was offside.
But did the foul come before the offside?
The Ifab law states: a player in an offside position is moving towards the ball with the intention of playing the ball and is fouled before playing or attempting to play the ball, or challenging an opponent for the ball, the foul is penalised as it has occurred before the offside offence.
We have seen this a few times in recent seasons.
Most notably in March 2019, just before VAR came into the Premier League, an offside Harry Kane was pushed over by Arsenal‘s Shkodran Mustafi as a ball was delivered into the area. A penalty was awarded.
In February 2024, Newcastle were given a penalty on VAR review against Bournemouth. Fabian Schar was ahead of the last defender but he hadn’t committed an offside offence before he was pulled back by Adam Smith.
On Sunday, Ouattara was running towards the flight of the ball. Like Kane, you can make a case that he did not do anything to make him actively offside prior to the foul.
However, fans struggle to get on board with these situations where an offside player effectively benefits from being in that position.
It is why there was controversy over Arsenal‘s first goal against Wolves. That came from a corner which was awarded despite Bukayo Saka being offside.
When Toti Gomes headed the ball behind, Saka had not committed any kind of offside offence. The Arsenal player was running forwards but did not challenge Gomes or try to play the ball.
Yet Wolves would argue that Toti only attempted the header because Saka was behind him.
