Wolves boss O’Neil fumes over ‘seven points’ lost to VAR

Wolves manager Gary O’Neil criticized VAR after his side’s 3-2 defeat to Fulham on Monday, saying the technology had cost them “seven points” in the Premier League this season.

The match saw three penalties awarded, including two for Fulham – the first for a challenge by Nélson Semedo on Tom Cairney, and as well as a late challenge by João Gomes on Harry Wilson after a VAR review.

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“I went to the referee,” O’Neil said. “He regrets not being sent to the screen to cancel the first penalty. He doesn’t think it was a penalty because he thinks it should have been sent to the screen and he would have canceled it from images that we watched together in his room.

“We then had an interesting discussion around the two possible red cards. They sent someone to speak to one of my staff and told him, according to the letter of the law, that Tim Ream should receive a second yellow card and should be expelled.

“We then discussed the headbutt, which it was, but he discussed it with me a little bit as well and he said it was a mild headbutt. What I just said was, is crazy. He’s absolutely crazy. So we can headbutt people like as long as it’s deemed soft or not hard enough? So my son at home watching this — millions of kids watching this — we tell them you can headbutt people on a football field, as long as it’s not too hard?

O’Neil’s side have been on the losing end of three VAR decisions this season that the Premier League’s independent Key Match Incidents Committee have admitted were errors – these include a missed foul by Manchester’s Andre Onana United in their opening match, while Newcastle United and Sheffield United were both awarded penalties which should have been overturned, with the latter kick being scored 10 minutes into injury time to give them the victory.

Wolves are 12th in the Premier League with 15 points from 13 games, but O’Neil said after Monday’s defeat that “bad refereeing decisions” had now cost them as many as seven points.

“We’re probably seven points behind the PGMOL notices, depending on what they come back with this time,” he added. “So that’s the difference between 22 and 15 points on my reputation at a big club, trying to build myself up as a new manager. The difference between 15 and 22 is irreparable.”

“Maybe with just a human referee one of the penalties could have gone against us, but the fact that we conceded two, for me VAR doesn’t help with subjective decisions. Maybe Tonight finally turned me against VAR.”

Information from Reuters contributed to this report.