He failed to spot an offside in the build-up to Brentford’s equalising goal away to Arsenal last Saturday
Lee Mason has not been selected as a VAR for the next round of Premier League matches following his offside error last weekend.
Mason failed to spot an offside in the build-up to Brentford’s equalising goal away to Arsenal last Saturday.
His name was absent from the appointments list published on the Premier League website at noon.
John Brooks, who was replaced as VAR for Monday night’s Merseyside derby and the Arsenal v Manchester City match on Wednesday after he wrongly disallowed a goal for Brighton against Crystal Palace, returns as a fourth official for the Aston Villa v Arsenal game on Saturday.
The errors at the weekend prompted Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer at Professional Game Match Officials Limited, to contact Arsenal and Brighton to acknowledge and explain them.
Webb called a meeting of all Premier League officials at Stockley Park on Tuesday in the wake of the incidents as he sought to identify what went wrong.
Mason has faced calls from former PGMOL general manager Keith Hackett to be sacked. Mason, who became a dedicated VAR at the start of last season following his retirement as a referee, did not investigate the play immediately leading to Brentford’s equaliser at the Emirates Stadium when Christian Norgaard appeared to be in an offside position before he hooked the ball across goal for Ivan Toney to score.
Mason had instead checked and cleared a passage of play immediately preceding that.
He was not selected for a round of matches in September after wrongly disallowing a Newcastle goal for a foul in their match at home to Crystal Palace.
Mason judged that Magpies forward Joe Willock had fouled Palace goalkeeper Vicente Guaita, when replays indicated Willock had been shoved into Guaita by Palace defender Tyrick Mitchell.
Brighton had a Pervis Estupinan goal wrongly disallowed when the offside lines were drawn against Palace defender James Tomkins instead of his team-mate Marc Guehi, who was stood behind Tomkins and playing Estupinan onside.
Published: by Radio NewsHub
