Ange Postecoglou says he wouldn't have allowed Liverpool to score to correct VAR error

Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou has played down claims that he'd have allowed Liverpool to score a goal to balance out the VAR error in last weekend's 2-1 victory over the Reds in north London.

The home side won the game with virtually the last kick of the game through an unfortunate own goal from Joel Matip, but Luis Diaz's disallowed goal in the first half emerged as the biggest talking point after the full-time whistle. The Colombian put the ball in the back of the net to give Liverpool the lead in the first half, but his strike was wrongly ruled out by VAR for offside.

Liverpool requested for footage from the VAR room and the audio recording revealed a simple case of miscommunication between referee Simon Hooper and VAR Darren England, with PGMOL chief Howard Webb reportedly apologizing to the Reds for costing them a goal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

At a press conference on Friday, Postecoglou was asked if he'd have allowed Liverpool to score a goal to even out the VAR error, to which he claimed he wouldn't spontaneously make such an important decision that would jeopardize the future of his club.

He said (quotes via Football Daily): “I just don’t see that, if we want managers to be the arbiters of these kinds of things. We’ve got pretty hefty responsibilities at our football clubs, but we’re not the custodians. I wouldn’t make a decision that potentially could send your club down on the back of what my beliefs are.

"In that moment, if somebody could tell me they could explain everything that went on, within the 30 seconds that I have to make a decision, it wasn’t going to happen. It’s different if it’s something clear. It’s quite obvious that it was a bad error, a bad mistake, through lack of communication, but it wasn’t something that was easily explainable. Because if it was, I would assume there would have been more uproar during the game than there was.

The Tottenham manager, however, admitted that his side were 'beneficiaries' of a mistake, adding that Liverpool had a legitimate goal wrongly disallowed for offside. He said: “Whatever I say is maybe going to be sent through the prism of maybe we were the beneficiaries of a mistake. We certainly were that. The facts of it are there was a legitimate goal that Liverpool scored that wasn’t given.

“You kind of look at why it’s not given, because that’s obviously the first thing you question. What’s broken down? Obviously, something’s broken down. It became pretty clear it wasn’t an integrity issue, it wasn’t a misappropriation of the law, it was an error in communication, a mistake.

“A mistake that cost Liverpool a goal, that’s what it was.”