The reason for the long delay in confirming Newcastle United’s second goal against Chelsea has been revealed. The Blues faced the Magpies at St James’ Park on Saturday afternoon.
Nick Waltemade put Newcastle ahead in the opening minutes, and they extended their advantage against the home side Chelsea midway through the first half.
Despite this, an extended VAR review was carried out to determine whether Waltemade was in an offside position when Anthony Gordon crossed for the Germany international.
This time, it has been confirmed that VAR’s semi-automatic offside technology malfunctioned during the review process.
The match was broadcast live on Britain’s TNT Sport, with commentator Darren Fletcher revealing that the technology used to determine offside was “down” when Waltemade’s goal was being judged.
“At that point, semi-automatic offside was down, so they didn’t have the technology to fall back on,” Fletcher explained.
“That would have made things go faster and the fact that Peter Banks (VAR referee) in the VAR room took some time to resolve the issue is just a small explanation.
Whether you like it or not, that’s why it took so long.
Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto both had chances to find the back of the net, but then Newcastle scored their second goal of the game.
Shortly after the start of the game, Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sanchez was shown a yellow card by referee Andy Madley.
This happened after Sanchez protested to the referee for not stopping the play due to a possible injury to Maro Gusto.
