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Liverpool boss Arne Slot was disappointed with the officials after his side were beaten 3-0 by Manchester City in the Premier League
Arne Slot was disappointed that Virgil van Dijk's header against Manchester City was ruled out for an offside against Andy Robertson - and used a City goal from 2024 as evidence.
Robertson stood a yard in front of City keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and ducked under the ball as van Dijk's header found the corner.
The offside flag was raised on the field, and the call stood after a VAR check. City were one up at that stage thanks to Erling Haaland, who had already missed a penalty, and Nico Gonzalez dealt Slot and Liverpool a sucker punch with a second goal on the stroke of half time. Jeremy Doku capped a fine individual performance with a brilliant third to lift City up to second.
But Slot felt his side were unfortunate not to have been level and pointed to a goal City scored at the start of last season as evidence. John Stones headed in a late winner for the Blues at Wolves when Bernardo Silva ducked out of the way of Stone's last-minute header. Chris Kavanagh was also the referee on that occasion, but the goal was awarded after a VAR check.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game at the Etihad, Slot said: "I think it's obvious and clear that the wrong decision has been made, at least in my opinion. Because he [Robertson] didn't interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do.
"Immediately after the game someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed City against Wolves last season [John Stones’ last minute winner]. So it took the linesman 13 seconds to raise his flag to say it's offside. So there was clearly communication."
Slot also felt VAR didn't need to intervene to award City a penalty early in the contest after Chris Kavanagh had waved away appeals for a foul by Liverpool goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili on Doku.
“Is it obvious and clear that this is the wrong decision?" Slot added.
“The only thing I could also see was that there was contact. I cannot disagree on that but after the contact he was able to put his foot in exactly the position he wanted to put his foot into. But, yeah, these are moments sometimes VARs or sometimes referees give a penalty for this - so you cannot talk too long about that.”
Despite those two gripes, Slot accepted that City were the better side over the course of the contest, with the Blues up to second and Liverpool now languishing in eighth.
“It's been a very good start of the week with a very bad end of the week," Slot added. "But City away is for everyone a difficult game, including for us.
"Last season we were able to win here because we scored a set-piece going 1-0 up and then we had to defend really hard afterwards.
"Today, I don't think, apart from that decision and maybe it was ever going to be our game - you would never know what would have happened after 1-1 but in general they were the better team.
"We need to improve, that's what we know, but I didn't need this game to know this.
"But I liked, if there's anything to like today, our second-half performance because teams that sometimes struggle, teams that go 3-0 down over here, they give up but that's not what I saw.
"I saw a team that was trying to come back into the game, we had moments to do so, but it wasn't enough today."
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