The quality of the officiating in the Premier League has come under the spotlight this season – and Wolverhampton Wanderers have been on the end of their fair share of controversial decisions.
Bruno Lage said: “I protect and I respect the referees a lot. The VAR is so important these days. The VAR cannot make mistakes, it should be there to help the referees. It’s so hard to be a referee. The game, especially here in the Premier League – the intensity, the speed of the game, the way the teams make tackles – it is important VAR helps the referees. They should not make too many mistakes and sometimes some mistakes happen. With VAR, it cannot happen in my opinion.”
Lage elected not to rewind his mind back to two contentious decisions before Christmas which went against Wolves, one of which could have huge ramifications on the race for Europe. Cast your minds back to August 29, when Manchester United were the visitors at Molineux. Wolves felt a 50/50 went against them when Alexandre Lacazette tangled with Sa as he teed up Gabriel.
Ruben Neves said: “I can accept the decision about their goal but in some games they give it and in some games they don’t. They need to do the same decisions in every game because it’s frustrating for us.”
In fairness to referee Michael Oliver, that decision was the least obvious of the four highlighted in this article. The next, which happened in the meeting with Arsenal at The Emirates two weeks later, was far more blatant.
