Newcastle United defender Dan Burn has admitted that Antoine Semenyo's disallowed goal for Manchester City was technically correct, but insisted such decisions are not what players or fans want to see. The controversial moment came during City's 2-0 win at St James' Park in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final.
Semenyo had opened the scoring for the visitors and thought he had doubled his tally when he flicked in from a corner, only for VAR to intervene. After a lengthy review, the goal was ruled out because Erling Haaland, in an offside position, was deemed to have denied Newcastle's Malick Thiaw the chance to clear the ball.
Burn, who was part of the Newcastle defence, gave a brutally honest reaction: "I do think it is the right decision, I just don't like the subjective offside. It's either offside, or it's not. We don't want to see that, but by the letter of the law it should be disallowed."
Semenyo, who has now scored two goals in two games since his move from Bournemouth, was adamant the goal should have stood, saying: "The second goal should have stood!" Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola claimed the decision made his team "stronger" as they went on to secure a second goal through Rayan Cherki. Bernardo Silva added: "It should have been 3-0 but we are quite used to this at the moment."
Former City defender Micah Richards was also critical of the use of VAR, saying: "I understand the process but VAR wasn't brought in for this reason here. This is anti-goal which they said they weren't going to do... This for me is re-refereeing the game. Why take five minutes?" The decision is likely to reignite debate over VAR, particularly given a previous incident where a panel admitted City were wrongly denied a penalty on their last visit to St James' Park, a game they lost 2-1.
