The Premier League's handball problem can no longer be ignored originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Pundits couldn't believe it. Nottingham Forest's players couldn't believe it. Most of the fans inside Old Trafford couldn't believe it. And honestly, neither could I.
Referee Michael Salisbury's decision to let Matheus Cunha's goal stand in Manchester United's 3-2 win over Forest, despite a clear handball in the build-up from Bryan Mbeumo, was quite simply a glaring refereeing error.
Mbeumo's blocked shot bounced up, struck his arm, and dropped invitingly for Cunha to side-foot home. Even the United players hesitated. Cunha barely celebrated. Mbeumo barely celebrated. They both seemed to know what was coming, or what should have been coming.
VAR Matthew Donohue did his job after he spotted the handball and recommended an on-field review. In nine cases out of ten, that ends one way. The referee jogs over, has a look, agrees, and the goal is chalked off. That is the entire point of the review process.
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Instead, Salisbury watched the screen for over a minute, walked back to the centre circle and announced the goal would stand because the handball was accidental.
Cue chaos. Cue Gary Neville losing his mind on Sky Sports. Cue Alan Shearer venting on X. Cue Forest boss Vitor Pereira politely seething in his post-match interview. Cue another week of the same conversation we have been having for four years.
So what does the rule actually say?
Under the 2021 IFAB rule change, an accidental handball that leads to a team-mate scoring is no longer an offence. If Mbeumo had scored himself, the goal gets chalked off, but because Cunha finished it, the goal stays, provided the contact is judged accidental.
Salisbury's reasoning is that Mbeumo's arm was by his side and the ball deflected off his hip first. Under the letter of the law, you can build a case.
But that is precisely the problem. You can build a case either way. The ball changed direction off his arm. It dropped into his control. It gifted Cunha a tap-in. In real time, every player on the pitch and every fan in the stadium expected it to be ruled out. The VAR expected it to be ruled out. That is not a sign of a working system.
The people inside the game are saying it themselves
"The only thing that was a pity for the game, in my opinion, is that the game was decided by a decision, and I don't agree with it," Pereira said afterwards.
"I looked at the iPad to look at the image and I stayed very calm, but in the end I think we need to have a meeting together to understand when it's handball, when it's a block, when it's a block in the box. At the moment, we don't know what is possible or not, and a lot of the time we don't understand the decisions. But I must accept it."
"I think that is an absolute shocker in every single way. It's ridiculous," said Neville.
"The VAR have been quite clear, they said it has been disallowed, he has handballed it and brought the ball back into play. I can't believe what I have just seen, to be honest. VAR looked at it for three minutes and then the referee looks at it for another minute. They are overthinking it. They have got themselves into a real mess there."
"Wow," said the former Newcastle and England striker posted on X. "That's disgraceful. Shocking shocking shocking. That's a CLEAR hand ball."
Forest captain Morgan Gibbs-White, who pulled one back late on, summed up the dressing-room view. "I think we need to have clear rules, there's a lot of controversy around it this season. It's not clear to anyone. I don't think anyone understands the rulings on it."
The bigger problem
When a manager, two of the country's most prominent pundits, and the captain are all saying the same thing on the same day, the issue is not the individual decision. The issue is the rule.
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Handball has been tinkered with so many times since VAR arrived that nobody, including the officials applying it, can give you a consistent answer. Was the arm in a natural position? Did it make the body unnaturally bigger? Was the contact accidental? Was the scorer the player who handled it, or a team-mate? Was there a deflection first? How many touches between the handball and the goal?
Every one of those questions has a subjective answer, and every subjective answer produces a different outcome depending on which official is looking at the screen.
The 2021 change was meant to remove the most absurd outcomes, the freak deflections off a defender's shoulder leading to chalked-off goals. Fair enough. But it has created a new absurdity, where a forward can clearly bring the ball under control with his arm, set up a team-mate, and watch the goal stand because his arm happened to be by his side.
What needs to happen
There needs to be a meeting and a public, written explanation of what is and is not handball, with examples, ideally backed by video. Players need to know. Managers need to know. Fans need to know. Referees need to know they will be supported when they call it one way or the other.
Until then, we are going to get more Sunday afternoons like this one. More three-minute reviews. More referees overruling their own VAR. More post-match interviews where everyone says the same thing and nothing changes.
The technology was supposed to take the controversy out of the big moments. Four years in, all it has done is move the controversy from the pitch to the screen.
