Newcastle press conference
Eddie Howe says it’s ‘sad’ how his Newcastle team have been robbed of praise by the VAR controversy surrounding their win over Arsenal.
Anthony Gordon earned the 1-0 victory, but his goal left Gunners boss Mikel Arteta fuming, labelled the decision to allow the goal as “embarrassing” after it stood following a triple VAR check.
And Howe believes the decision overshadowed an ‘outstanding’ performance from his team and dominated the reaction to the game, rather than his players’ superb performance.
He said: “I can’t give enough credit to the players who we do have who are fit and available and how they’ve attacked the games.
“You go back to Arsenal and I think the only disappointment for me was the VAR incident overshadowed our performance, because when you take into consideration the position we’re in it was absolutely outstanding.
“The players were magnificent in their commitment and desire to win and our general performance was so strong, so that’s what we need to focus on and try and get right tomorrow.”
Victory meant that Newcastle climbed into sixth in the Premier League table, but Howe added that it was “sad” post-match discussion became focused on the goal decision.
“It’s a big subject, VAR in my opinion won’t be going anywhere. I was reluctant to VAR initially to come in, I was more in favour of letting the referee have the power over decisions, but I think there’s been real benefits with VAR, there’s aspects of it that do work.
“But my big thing is that when a game ends it should be about the players, about the football, about what we’ve seen. The main focus should not be about the referees or VAR.
“I think that’s very dangerous, as I say, we beat Arsenal and played very well.
“I don’t think there was any talk or reaction about how well the team played or individuals within the team and how well they excelled, it was all about one refereeing decision which I think is sad.”
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