Gary Lineker struggles to understand Liverpool VAR controversy in new verdict

Liverpool was perhaps a little fortunate that Florian Wirtz's goal against Fulham was allowed to stand because of the extra tolerance level afforded in the Premier League

Gary Lineker on The Rest Is Football podcast(Image: The Rest Is Football/YouTube)

Liverpool was pinned back to 2-2 by a Harrison Reed wonderstrike at Craven Cottage on Sunday, but while Arne Slot's men almost did enough to win, they were also the beneficiaries of some good fortune.

After Harry Wilson netted the opener, Florian Wirtz leveled. However, he might have been offside as Conor Bradley played him through, with the Premier League having a bigger margin of tolerance than most top flights around Europe when using VAR.

Wirtz could potentially have been offside, but the Premier League clubs decided they wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker when the lines are drawn to work out. He appeared to fall inside that margin and, as a result, scored his second goal.

"In football, you are talking fine margins," Alan Shearer said on The Rest Is Football podcast. "Fine margins helped them get the Wirtz goal because, looking at that, I thought it was offside."

"That was bizarre, wasn’t it?" Gary Lineker replied. "The line on the pitch was exact... maybe the line was a bit [skewed], I don’t know, because they’ve got this automated thing that we’re trying to trust."

From the start of the 2021-22 season, a tolerance level of around five centimeters was added to the old offside technology. Back then, the lines were being drawn by match officials.

Florian Wirtz looked to be offside as he scored for Liverpool against Fulham(Image: Shaun Brooks - CameraSport via Getty Images)

Essentially, if the two lines (defender and attacker) touched, the player would be given as onside regardless of the on-field decision.

Because the technology is not 100 percent accurate (it is very hard to manually pinpoint the exact split-second moment the ball has been passed, for example), an extra level of tolerance was attached.

A player could be marginally offside in reality, but onside when the extra leeway is applied.

But while better and more accurate technology is now in place and trusted elsewhere, in the Premier League, the clubs voted against that, benefiting Wirtz here.

Semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) means that in other leagues, including the top divisions in Germany, Spain and Italy, have gone back to calculating offsides by the millimeter.

In all likelihood, in other leagues around Europe, Wirtz would have been called offside. But when the Premier League introduced SAOT, it decided to continue with the same tolerance level that was previously in place.

Liverpool.com says: Wirtz might have got a little lucky, but the Premier League clubs only have themselves to blame for the confusion. Trusting the technology appears to be the better system, rather than having onside decisions that look like this.