Summary Referee Michael Oliver and the VAR team made a huge mistake by failing to spot an obvious offside during the Manchester City game. The offside occurred as Nathan Ake scored a goal, with teammate Manuel Akanji clearly in an offside position, interfering with the goalkeeper's ability to make a save. Even journalists and former referees were surprised and believed that the goal should have been disallowed.
Referee Michael Oliver and his VAR team made a huge mistake in the most recent Manchester City game as they failed to spot a clear offside when Nathan Ake scored for the home team.
What's the latest on Manchester City and VAR?
Pep Guardiola and his side had made the perfect start to the Premier League season with three wins from their opening three games and so would have been feeling confident going into this weekend's clash against Fulham.
And that confidence was backed up after 31 minutes as Julian Alvarez opened the scoring for City. However, the away team didn't take long to respond as Tim Ream netted an equaliser just two minutes later.
It looked as though the first half was set to end all square but Dutch defender Ake headed in a Phil Foden corner to put Guardiola's side up 2-1. Upon watching replays of the goal, though, it's clear a big mistake was made by the officials.
Indeed, as you can see from the replay below, Ake's teammate Manuel Akanji is clearly standing in an offside position as he jumps over the ball, and even then flicked out a boot at it, thus hindering Bernd Leno as the goalkeeper attempts to make a save.
The Fulham players were understandably enraged and further images of the incident don't do much to help City's case.
What has been said about the Ake goal for Man City?
Even though you can forgive referee Oliver for not spotting the offside immediately, it seems like a pretty obvious call for the VAR team to check and then correct. But somehow the goal stood.
Even journalist Sam Lee, who covers Man City on a regular basis, was surprised the goal wasn't disallowed, taking to Twitter to write: "Goal given! I am very surprised by that, would have been very easy to say Akanji was in the way of Leno imo [in my opinion].
What's more, while speaking on Sky Sports, former referee Mike Dean even stated that the VAR team should have intervened to rule out the goal, saying: "In my opinion no, it just can't stand. He's [Akanji] jumped over the ball, he has to be interfering!"
He added: "It just has to be disallowed."
Craig Dawson then chimed in with: "Bernd Leno takes an extra step because he thinks he thinks Akanji's going to take a touch!"
VAR expert for ESPN, Dale Johnson, explained how the decision was arrived at, but still condemned it, writing on Twitter: "The VAR checked for offside interference by Manuel Akanji as he moved out of the way of the ball before it went in, and decided no impact on Bernd Leno.
"Don't see how you can judge that Akanji's "obvious action" didn't impact. Has to."
In the end, City made sure this one controversial goal wasn't the deciding factor in the game with Erling Haaland netting a second-half hat-trick as the home team won 5-1 in front of their own fans at the Etihad.
