Alan Shearer believes it was ‘incomprehensible’ that Luis Diaz’s goal un Liverpool’s 2-1 loss to Tottenham was not allowed to stand.

The Reds suffered their first defeat of the 2023-24 season in north London, despite the fact that the game was marred by controversy. Curtis Jones was sent off for the visitors after being shown a yellow card by referee Simon Hooper for a challenge on Yves Bissouma following a VAR check.

However, Liverpool felt they had taken the lead when Luis Diaz was ruled offside. Replays revealed that the winger was in a legal position when Mo Salah put him through, and the referees’ organisation PGMOL has since conceded ‘a substantial human error’ following a quick check by VAR referee Darren England.

Jurgen Klopp’s team would go on to lose the game, as well as have Diogo Jota sent off for two yellow cards in the second half. Tottenham’s Son Heung-min opened the scoring in the 38th minute, but Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo equalized in first-half stoppage time. The Reds defended excellently with nine men but were saddened in the 96th minute when Joel Matip turned into his own net.

Shearer was perplexed as to why Diaz’s goal was given on Match of the Day. “It’s incomprehensible,” the former Newcastle striker added. The offside is the one aspect of VAR that we have accepted, learned, and cannot disagree with. This will cast serious doubt on actions made in the past and in the future as a result of this. It’s a huge oversight, but he’s certainly on board. We actually noticed within a second or two that it wasn’t offside.

“We’re led to believe that Darren England, who was in the VAR hub, and Daniel Cook, who was the assistant VAR, did everything they needed to do in terms of drawing the lines.” Instead of telling referee Simon Hooper that he needed to allow a goal, he had a big gap in concentration and said check complete.

“My response is, what is the point of having an assistant VAR?” I calculated that it takes about 30-35 seconds for him to make the decision and then kick-off. It’s a massive mistake by VAR [referee] Darren England, but why can’t Daniel Cook say, ‘Hold on a minute, before you kick-off, we need to stop this rather than going through this process in which we’ve made a huge mistake?’ We could and should have halted it before the game started.”