Match of the Day pundit rips into VAR after 'ridiculous' Chelsea controversy

Danny Murphy has labelled the decision to rule out Fulham's goal against Chelsea as the 'worst' VAR intervention he remembers. The Match of the Day pundit and former Fulham midfielder was left incredulous by Josh King's goal being cancelled after referee Robert Jones was sent to the monitor.

The Cottagers were defeated 2-0 at Stamford Bridge but thought they had taken a lead when 18-year-old King finished off what appeared to be a silky move on the break. Fulham's celebrations were cut short however when the official was sent to review the goal for an incident in the build up.

Rodrigo Muniz stood on Chelsea defender Trevoh Chalobah's foot as he completed a turn in his own half. What had initially been viewed as good play from the Brazilian forward was deemed to be a foul in retrospect by Jones.

Speaking after checking the goal on the pitchside monitor, Jones said: "After review, the Fulham 9 commits a careless challenge and stamps on the foot of the Chelsea 23. Therefore we disallowed the goal and restart with a Chelsea free kick."

Murphy point-blank disagreed with the assessment. The 48-year-old reckons a catalogue of errors occured to see King's strike ruled out.

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"I don't remember seeing a worse VAR decision than this one, and referee as well because he has the chance. It's a brilliant goal. What they are saying is it's a careless challenge. Muniz doesn't make a challenge, he uses a great bit of skill, a maradona turn, he's not making a challenge.

"He's used the skill and is planting his foot, there's not a challenge. The challenge is from Chalobah. For some reason VAR decides to get involved, I don't know why.

"It's a complete lack of understanding. It doesn't matter whether you've played the game or not, everyone can see that's a bit of skill and the referee had a wonderful opportunity when he got called to the screen, for once to go 'Actually no, that's absolutely fine, let's move on. But he didn't. That's the bit that got me.

"These are experienced guys who have been doing it a long time now. They've got to do better because that's an easy decision to get right and it's really poor from them and I hope to God there's an apology."

Fulham boss Marco Silva was equally amazed by the decision. "Everybody's shocked by what's happened this afternoon," he told Match of the Day. "Nobody can tell me it was an obvious foul from Rodrigo. It's difficult to understand.

"How you disallow a goal like that is unbelievable," Silva also said. "We have meetings with referee and people in charge, we all want to win. VAR is not here to re-referee the game. I would prefer not to say something more because I would be punished. I want to be on the touchline next week to help my team, I don't want to be fined. But it has been a difficult start to the season with some decisions."

It was not the only decision by VAR to come in for criticism in the Premier League on Saturday. Manchester United were awarded a late penalty against Burnley after Sam Barrott initially waved away appeals.

The first contact in the challenge occurred outside the box, but VAR Stuart Attwell asked the on-field official to review his decision. It took four minutes to go get through the process before Bruno Fernandes converted the spotkick.

"It's the way the game has gone - quadruple checking everything every minute," a frustrated Scott Parker told BBC Match of the Day. "On the field, the referee didn't give the foul, then we've re-reffed it. It's not the ref, it's a fella 200-odd miles away in a box."

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