Manchester derby VAR mistake: Why Haaland's winner stood despite Enzo Fernandez being yards offside

The Premier League is still dealing with the fallout from the Manchester derby. Erling Haaland's goal, which gave Manchester City a 1-0 win over Manchester United, continues to dominate the conversation days later, not because of the Norwegian's finish but because of the huge VAR failure that allowed it. Enzo Fernandez was three yards offside before he attempted to head the ball, a position the officiating team missed while reviewing the incident at full speed.

• VAR Matt Donohue and assistant VAR Blake Antrobus failed to spot Enzo Fernandez's offside position before Haaland's goal.
• The review was completed in seconds, with a rushed exchange between the VAR and the replay operator.
• The Premier League has reduced average VAR delays from 46 to 36 seconds per game this season.
• It is the second major VAR error of the campaign, following the penalty not awarded to Arsenal at Aston Villa.
• Referees' chief Howard Webb admitted the VAR never even considered whether Fernandez was offside.

What happened on Haaland's goal: the VAR's rushed review

The sequence was frantic. Donohue asked the replay operator to freeze the frame at the moment Josko Gvardiol touched the ball to cross into the box. He then moved straight into the semi-automated offside technology. The problem is that he never reviewed the full picture, from the cross to Haaland's header. Had he done so, he would have noticed Fernandez's position and his influence on the play.

The audio from the review revealed a hurried Donohue, repeatedly urging everyone to move faster. It was not a calm, methodical assessment but the opposite. The obsession with completing the check as quickly as possible became the biggest enemy of accuracy.

A Premier League that asked for faster VAR and got it

This season the English top flight set a clear principle for the game: apply VAR more efficiently to reduce delays. Fans had grown tired of endless waits while officials reviewed every detail on the monitor. The pressure to shorten those times has worked, at least on paper. Average delays per match have dropped from 46 to 36 seconds compared with last season.

However, speed comes at a price. The only other admitted VAR error this season, the penalty not given to Arsenal at Aston Villa, also stemmed largely from the incident being cleared too quickly. Shortening the process cannot mean skipping steps of the protocol.

Shared responsibility: what went wrong between Donohue and Antrobus

Matt Donohue has taken much of the criticism, but Blake Antrobus played an equally decisive role. His contribution to the entire review was limited to a brief "no, yeah" when assessing whether Fernandez had touched the ball. It came one second before Donohue confirmed the goal. The assistant VAR's job is precisely to act as a check and balance, making sure nothing has been missed. On this occasion, that safety net did not work.

It is striking that Antrobus was also the assistant VAR for the longest review of the season, the disallowed Dan Ballard goal in the game between Brentford and Sunderland. That decision took more than four minutes and drew plenty of criticism from sections of the media. It is impossible to know if that memory weighed on his mind during the derby, but the irony is clear: on that occasion his thoroughness was key to getting the call right, and this time his haste worked against him.

How England is training its VAR specialists

Three seasons ago, the refereeing body in England launched an accelerated programme to train video assistant referee specialists. Around fifteen candidates passed the aptitude tests, and ten of them have now officiated matches in the Premier League. Donohue is one of those graduates, and the derby was his 65th game in charge of VAR. His development has been such that he is now on the international list, with appointments in European club competition qualifying rounds over the summer.

The record shows how difficult the role is. Only two VARs, Nick Hopton and Neil Davies, both from the same intake, have ended the last two seasons without a single error. Howard Webb himself dismissed the only full-time VARs the Premier League had, Lee Mason and Mike Dean, just months into his tenure because of a catalogue of mistakes.

To make a decision in 10, 20 seconds is not easy for them. Sometimes they make mistakes. I make mistakes, players make mistakes. It's part of our job.

Those words come from Enzo Maresca, the Manchester City manager, who unsurprisingly viewed the error with some sympathy. His side took all three points thanks to that goal, but his comments reflect a wider reality: the demand for immediacy surrounding modern refereeing turns every review into a test under pressure.

Why Spain is not the solution the Premier League needs

Some have called for video officials who never step onto the pitch and work exclusively in front of the monitor. Spain's La Liga and its second division are among the few competitions with a full team of dedicated VAR specialists. Yet a glance at the headlines coming out of Spain shows the controversy is no different to what England experiences. At the start of last season, a Spanish VAR completely missed a scorer being in an offside position when the ball was played.

The issue, at its core, is not who sits in front of the screens but what is being asked of them. The Premier League wanted quicker reviews and it has achieved that, but at the expense of accuracy. The Manchester derby is the most painful proof that speed cannot be allowed to trump correct decisions.

What the derby mistake means for the rest of the season

The error by Donohue and Antrobus did not happen in just any match; it happened in one of the biggest games of the season. The refereeing body will have to explain why a video official felt the need to rush through a review of that magnitude so desperately. Last season, the disallowed West Ham equaliser against Arsenal in stoppage time took more than four minutes, but the final decision was correct. The contrast between the two cases is telling: when the protocol is respected, the outcome tends to be the right one.

The obsession with speed threatens to undermine all the training and resources invested in recent years. But perhaps the problem is not solely down to the officials. It is a football problem, one created by an industry that demands instant answers and then recoils when that very speed leads to mistakes.