Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou insists he is ‘not a fan’ of VAR despite it working in Spurs’ favour during their 2-1 win over Liverpool

• Tottenham picked up an important 2-1 win over Liverpool on Saturday night
• Luis Diaz had a goal ruled out but the PGMOL have admitted it should have stood
• Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou said after the game that he is ‘not a fan’ of VAR

Ange Postecoglou refused to get drawn on Jurgen Klopp’s comments about the officiating in Liverpool’s loss at Tottenham, but the Spurs boss reiterated his dislike of VAR.

Even though it worked in Tottenham’s facvour that Luis Diaz had a goal ruled out erroneously for offside in the first-half, a mistake admitted by the refereeing governing body PGMOL, Postecoglou says he has never liked VAR.

‘I think I’m on record as saying that I’ve never really been a fan of it since it came in,’ said the former Celtic manager.

‘Not for any other reason than I think that it complicates areas of the game that I thought were pretty clear in the past, but I can see at the same time why it was inevitable that technology would come in.

‘We have to deal with it. The biggest problem I think that we have is that we seem to fail to grasp is that no form of technology is going to make the game errorless. We used to understand that errors were part of the game, including officiating errors.

Ange Postecgolou’s Tottenham beat Liverpool 2-1 on Saturday in a dramatic game

Reds winger Luis Diaz had an early goal controversially ruled out for offside 

Replays clearly showed Diaz was being played onside by Spurs defender Cristian Romero

‘You’d have to cop it and some people would cop it better than others but that was part of the game. The game is littered with historical refereeing decisions that weren’t right but we all accepted it that it was part of the game because we’re dealing with human beings.’

The PGMOL statement afterwards admitted that disallowing the Diaz goal was down to ‘human error’ and was ‘a clear and obvious error that should have resulted in a goal.’

Postecoglou continued: ‘I think that people are under the misconception that VAR is going to be errorless. I don’t think there’s any technology, because so much of our game isn’t factual. 

‘It’s down to interpretation and they’re still human beings. They’re going to make mistakes the same way managers make mistakes, the same way players make mistakes.

‘When you put such a high bar on something it invariably is going to fail, so if people are thinking that VAR is going to be something that at some point that is perfect, that’s never going to happen.’

Klopp was angered by the decision and said after that he knew the goal should have stood

PGMOL has acknowledged that Luis Diaz’s goal against Tottenham was incorrectly ruled out

Asked about the red cards, for Curtis Jones’ studs-up challenge on Yves Bissouma and then two yellow cards from Diogo Jota, Postecoglou added: ‘It’s hard for me to comment on decisions on opposition teams, but for the first one Biss has got a decent whack on his ankle so it didn’t look great and I thought the second came from our pressure. 

‘I thought we were pretty relentless in the second half and didn’t allow them to breathe.

‘We obviously had the man extra and there were a fair few fouls so I think it was an accumulation of things, but they are decisions against another team. 

‘I haven’t commented on decisions against our team this year and there were a couple of times I felt it could have gone either way so I’ll leave it for others to decide if right or wrong.’

He was, however, delighted to see his side win in stoppage time once again to go above Liverpool and Arsenal into second place, a point behind Manchester City.

‘It was a fairly eventful finish again and I’m obviously pleased to come out on the positive side.’ 

Liverpool finished the game with nine men after Diogo Jota (pictured) and Curtis Jones were sent off

The game finished 2-1 after Joel Matip scored an own goal in the sixth minute of injury time

Postecoglou felt the late winner would ‘continue to build belief in the group’ at Tottenham

But he added: ‘I’ve been at pains to say that I don’t have a schedule I’m marking it against. It’s fair to say that we’ve had some significant challenges in the first seven weeks of the season and the way we’ve dealt with them I’ve been really pleased, including today.

‘Obviously you want to put the game to bed earlier than when we did but sometimes when you score that late it just helps to continue to build that belief in the group and the spirit within the group that we have that in us to go to the last minute. 

‘All these things, they’re not by design, it’s just the nature of the game and I’m not sitting here thinking we’re ahead of some schedule.

‘I can understand why some people might have had that in their minds because they’re making prognostications based on the information they have, but for me it’s just not of interest because I don’t know how far we can go with the group. We just need to keep pushing on.’

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