With a match almost every night, it really offered something to sink your teeth into.
I definitely ended up watching much more Premier League than I was earlier in the season. My attention back then may well have been saturated by the vast array of different sports available to watch, and each of their different competitions. The top level of English men’s football had become something that I was taking for granted.
This is not to say that I stopped caring, or was not watching at all. Indeed, it was impossible to ignore the fantastic season that Liverpool were forging.
With the restart, however, it gave me a chance to live through sport at its best.
Sport is at its best when it has a narrative.
If you tune in to the last five minutes of the World Cup final, or glance up at a screen just as an Olympic gold medal is being won, it is never as good as feeling like you’ve seen a story unfold by watching more than just those climactic moments.
This is what I felt with the return of the Premier League.
Yes, Liverpool were certain to win the title. But could Leicester City get the job done and qualify for the UEFA Champions League? Could Wolverhampton Wanderers or Sheffield United find a way in there, too? Burnley and Crystal Palace also had a chance of gaining European football next season. And then there’s the fight to avoid relegation.
In normal times, Aston Villa versus Sheffield United would probably not be a match which I'd sit down in front of. For their meeting on 17th June, though, I made sure I was watching. It was the very first Premier League match back.
My anticipation had been rising. Other countries in Europe had already got their leagues back underway. German football now had a new following. I had just spent the weekend watching Polish action.
The match at Villa Park represented a success. British sport could pull itself through these tough times.
Villa Park before a Premier League match in 2006
As for the match itself, 0–0.
Yet, there was an incident.
A rather big incident.
Late on in the first half, the Aston Villa goalkeeper caught the ball from a free kick, only to take it over the goal-line. Not by much, but definitely over.
No goal.
Why? Offside? Pushing in the box?
Nope.
The Goal Decision System did not indicate that a goal had been scored.
Sheffield United were denied the lead in the most bizarre circumstances.
The match officials on the pitch should bear no fault for this failure. The referee wears a watch which alerts when a goal is scored. With no reason to suppose otherwise, the referee awarded nothing, as his watch remained blissfully sedate. He assumed it to be the case that not all of the ball had crossed all of the line.
The Video Assistant Referee (VAR), on the other hand, should take some blame in this instance. While the Goal Decision System is used to decide whether a goal is scored by measuring whether the ball has crossed the line, VAR can be used at any time to help with match changing incidents.
So why didn’t VAR intervene here?
They could have done and should have done.
In truth, upon watching the first few replays, I wasn’t 100% sure myself.
When the ball is on the ground and mostly over the goal-line, it is possible to see the green grass between ball and line, but for it not to be a goal due to the curvature of the ball, and the overhang that this creates. Although the ball was instead being clutched by the goalkeeper at Villa Park, my first thought was that this effect had come into play. After all, the ball looked far enough over the line for it to take only the slenderest of margins for it not to be a goal.
But each replay showed the keeper stumble back a little further. Surely in that moment he had taken the whole ball over the whole line?
Of course, in time, we got the clarity that he had. I guess that the VAR just assumed that the Goal Decision System was better placed to make a judgement than everyone who could see what happened on the replays with their own eyes.
On the night, it was a big talking point at half time. Another football controversy.
By this time, I had accepted that it should have been a goal.
I was thinking of reasons as to what could have gone wrong.
What with it being the first game since lockdown, maybe the officials had forgotten the correct protocols in enabling the goal-line technology? Maybe the virtual line ‘seen’ by the cameras involved in the technology had been calibrated incorrectly so that it did not match up to the actual line in real life?
Whatever the reason for the error, a thought had occurred to me during the interval.
At the start of the second half, could Aston Villa just allow Sheffield United to score, unopposed?
All three dressing rooms (home, away and referees’) must have become aware of the situation at the break. A quick discussion between a member of each would suffice for an agreement to be made that the ball could be walked in.
It would right the wrongs of the first half, and still give Aston Villa plenty of time to respond.
None of the pundits or commentators brought up the idea at the time. Maybe if they had, someone could have relayed it to the managers to mull over before they came out for the second half.
There are various precedents for teams allowing their opponents to score. Most that I can think of involve when a team score unintentionally as play is restarted after an injury.
Indeed, Aston Villa scored an uncontested goal of their own in April last year. Leeds United had scored in their meeting, despite Aston Villa having a player down injured. Then, to the bemusement of many, an irate Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds United boss, ordered his players to allow Aston Villa to score. Perhaps most astonishingly of all, that episode saw Leeds United win FIFA’s Fair Play award later that year, despite Bielsa having his staff spy on opponents’ training earlier in the campaign.
Another occasion that I can think of involved Nottingham Forest and Leicester City in a League Cup encounter in 2007. The East Midlands rivals were drawn against each other, but animosity transitioned to concern when Leicester City’s Clive Clarke suffered a cardiac arrest. The match was abandoned.
Clarke would recover, and the match was rescheduled. As Nottingham Forest were leading 1–0 when the original match was halted, Leicester City decided that “it was a difficult situation, but it was the right thing to do” to let their opponents have a free goal in the new fixture, and reset from there.
Interestingly in that match, it was the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Paul Smith who was the one to score uncontested. In that way, betting markets couldn’t be manipulated ahead of the match if word got out about the plans.
So, should Aston Villa have allowed Sheffield United to score for free?
Or, from another point of view, why should Aston Villa have allowed Sheffield United to score for free?
It was not Aston Villa’s fault that the technology failed. Nor was it their fault that there was no intervention from VAR. It is not up to Aston Villa to referee the game. It is not up to them to decide which injustice is an injustice too many for the sport of football.
After all, football is still ridden with decisions that should not be. On Sunday, Brentford’s Rico Henry was shown a red card in the first leg of their play-off semi-final against Swansea City. That resulted from a challenge which had the Brentford bench applauding the quality of. The referee’s decision may well have been pivotal on that night, as Swansea City went on to score and win 1–0.
Henry’s red card ended up being rescinded. He was able to play in last night’s second leg, and was instrumental in Brentford’s third goal which ended up being vital. Brentford could leave Griffin Park on the highest of highs. I’m sad that I never got the chance to go to that ground.
Brentford head coach Thomas Frank has called for VAR in the play-offs. Maybe we will see that be the case sooner rather than later. Although, as we see in the Premier League, having VAR available is no guarantee of the correct decision.
There has been a litany of VAR decisions in the Premier League this season which experts have said were wrong.
So, why should Aston Villa have allowed Sheffield United to score for free?
That question's even more rhetorical this time. After all, football has seen other errors, and they have not gone on to be corrected in-game, so why should this one?
To give an answer, I suppose that this was not an instance of a red card, a penalty or anything else which might have had an effect on the scoreline. This was an instance which very much did have an effect on the scoreline, as Sheffield United had a perfectly legitimate goal simply not count.
But, again, why should it be up to Aston Villa to decide on the fairness of the situation? Is it not understandable that when you are in the relegation mire you take every single piece of good fortune that you can possibly grasp?
I think that that is what the Aston Villa fans can hold onto. If their team had just allowed Sheffield United to score, then those fans might not have felt that they’d seen their side do the right thing, and instead finish the night feeling dejected, as they’d have just wasted the biggest slice of luck that they’d been handed all season.
Regardless of what the right thing to do was, the fact is that the match ended goalless. Officially, at least.
Aston Villa were able to add a point to their Premier League tally.
Fast forward to the final day of the season. Aston Villa stay up by one point.
It’d be remiss of me to avoid mentioning the heart that the club showed to collect eight points from their final four games and drag themselves out of the drop zone.
However, this week it has emerged that AFC Bournemouth are pondering a legal challenge over that goal-line technology error back in June.
Had Aston Villa not got a point out of that match, AFC Bournemouth would have survived instead.
Maybe this is a case of ‘would’ve, could’ve, should’ve’, and should instead be a case of ‘the table doesn’t lie’. Maybe. But this shows that there are at least a few murmurings of resentment coming out of AFC Bournemouth.
Look, I think that it’s important to point out that I can’t see any scenario where AFC Bournemouth are somehow reprieved of relegation. The season has been played out, and it is too late for any fiddling in the courts (I say that while relegation issues in the Championship and League Two are still being decided… in the courts).
What might be likely is for AFC Bournemouth to consider chasing damages, possibly from Hawk-Eye, the company which operates the goal-line technology.
After the Aston Villa–Sheffield United match, Hawk-Eye released a statement, explaining what went wrong:
“The seven cameras located in the stands around the goal area were significantly occluded by the goalkeeper, defender, and goalpost. This level of occlusion has never been seen before in over 9,000 matches that the Hawk-Eye Goal Line Technology system has been in operation.
“Hawk-Eye unreservedly apologises to the Premier League, Sheffield United, and everyone affected by this incident.”
Back at the time when goal-line technology was first being developed, two systems got the go-ahead from FIFA and football’s rule makers. One system involved cameras triangulating the ball, and the other involved a ball with a sensor chip implanted inside which would activate when passing through a magnetic field covering the goalmouth.
I’m not sure that I ever really understood the latter. How could a chip within a ball tell where the outside of the ball was, and thus whether all of the ball had truly crossed all of the line?
While I’m sure that the developers of that technology have that answer, I ended up plumping for the camera system as my own preferred choice. Mostly, this was down to the fact that replays would become available, and show a virtual goal and a virtual football, and be able to show just how close that chance that we were all wondering about really was.
What with it being a camera-based system, one thought did occur to me, though. It was a little farfetched, so bear with me.
What if a striker had a shot, and the goalkeeper adopted a position whereby they were crouching to get to their preferred height, with their hands out in front of them ready to parry? What if the goalkeeper then leaned backwards in anticipation of the force of the shot, only for the ball to avoid their hands and… go up the inside of their shirt, which had bellowed upwards just enough during the goalkeeper's movements so that the ball was afforded safe passage up there? What if the goalkeeper then fell over the goal-line, with the ball still inside their shirt, thus marginally taking all of the ball over all of the line?
Unless there is some rule which I am unaware of about the ball not being allowed to go under a shirt, then that should be a goal (at least if you followed what I was trying to describe).
However, with the ball being fully obscured by the goalkeeper’s shirt, it would be invisible to the cameras used in goal-line technology. I always wondered what would happen in this situation, and I suspected that there may be a flaw in the shiny new solution.
As it happens, in the Aston Villa–Sheffield United encounter, I had managed to watch a match which would answer my question. Alright, the actual scenario of the goalkeeper cradling the ball close to his body next to the post and other players is perhaps not quite as elaborate as my fantasy, but this was evidence that cameras can’t always see everything.
One of the drawbacks of technology is human reliance on it.
Hopefully improvements will be made to ensure that this can’t happen again.
It was always going to be the case that once technology was brought into football, far from eliminating controversy, it would just make any errors even bigger talking points.
I do actually remember one other time when Hawk-Eye cameras couldn’t be used to make a decision. It was during Wimbledon one year, and I was watching Mansour Bahrami play in the senior’s doubles. He’s known as the Court Jester, so there was tomfoolery aplenty.
Mansour Bahrami skulks his way through the 2009 Nottingham Masters
During one point, the ball went careering off into the sky. After it had eventually landed, the players decided to challenge the line call, more as a joke than as anything serious. Perhaps out of curiosity, the umpire announced that the call was being challenged. Ultimately, a message came up on the screen saying that the point could not be challenged, and so the original call would stand. I guess that the ball had gone out of the range of the cameras, and could not be tracked properly!
But, before that match at Villa Park, I had never seen that happen in football. My question as to what would happen if the cameras didn’t pick the ball up had been answered. In order for me to get my answer, though, there had to be a cost.
Sheffield United might feel that they should have had three points instead of one. And, more potently, AFC Bournemouth have been relegated. They are left to rue what they may very well feel is a crucial bonus point for Aston Villa.
Whether or not it actually is an injustice, we undoubtedly have the problem of people in the game feeling injustice.
This reminds me of the Carlos Tevez affair. In 2007 West Ham United signed Tevez and Javier Mascherano. Tevez played a significant part in helping his new side avoid relegation, most notably scoring the winning goal against Manchester United on the final day of the season. The problem was, Tevez and Mascherano were signed improperly with third party involvement.
The club which went down while West Ham United stayed up felt hard done by, to put it mildly. The fans of that club have had to wait until the start of this season to see their side play Premier League football again, and to feel that injustice finally put right. That club? Sheffield United.
Maybe it is a case that these injustices right themselves over time. This year, the English Football League welcomes Barrow back into its ranks. The club had lost its place in the League in 1972, not simply because of bad results, but by failing to get re-elected.
One match programme which I have collected tells of a similar story. I went to see Cambridge United versus Gateshead in the Skrill Premier Promotion Final 2014. The piece which Gateshead provided on their club history for the programme is titled “Looking to right a wrong”. The club was seeking a return to the Football League after failing to get re-elected some 54 years prior. The column tells me that Gateshead were left with “their demotion widely regarded as the harshest expulsion in Football League history”. Their wait goes on, as I witnessed Cambridge United coming out on top.
The teams line up for the Skrill Premier Promotion Final 2014
Now it falls on AFC Bournemouth to feel ‘what might have been’. It falls on them and their fans to have to wait until they are back in English football’s top flight again before they can feel as if the wrongs have been righted. Just like Sheffield United after the Tevez affair. AFC Bournemouth fans will hope that their wait is not quite as long as that, though, after their owner said that he wants them back in the Premier League “as soon as possible”.
And yet, all this could have been avoided. Aston Villa could have let Sheffield United walk the ball into the net, giving them the lead that they should have had.
I’m not meaning to take issue with Aston Villa in any way. In fact, of the clubs fighting relegation, I thought that the story of Aston Villa fan Dean Smith and Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish leading their side to safety would be the most romantic.
I just wonder, though, whether it would have been better for everyone if Aston Villa had let Sheffield United score. Better for football. Better for sport. Maybe. I’m not sure.
AFC Bournemouth would not suffer that stinging feeling. They would not be considering legal action.
Who knows? Maybe Aston Villa could have bagged themselves a FIFA Fair Play award.
