HOWARD WEBB wants the handball law changed to avoid controversies like Nottingham Forest’s disallowed “winner” over Tottenham.
Forest full-back Neco Williams was adjudged by VAR to have used his arm to bundle the ball into the Spurs net at the City Ground.
Ref Craig Pawson awarded the goal before VAR Peter Bankes intervened to chalk it off.
However, replays did not appear to prove the ball struck him on the arm.
Goals are currently ruled out if the ball touches a goalscorer’s hand or arm — whether or not it is accidental.
The Forest incident came six days after Manchester United’s second goal against Ipswich stood.
That was because although Harry Maguire handled the ball accidentally, his resulting shot deflected off Jacob Greaves for an own goal.
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Pro Ref boss Webb believes clearly accidental handball goals SHOULD count.
He gave his view BEFORE the season started — and the Williams controversy — in a briefing at Prem HQ in West London on August 19.
Webb said: “The one thing I would change is in attacking handball decisions.
“At the moment, if the ball goes into the goal off your hand, accidentally or otherwise, you have to disallow that.
“And if it touches your hand accidentally or otherwise and then score with your foot, you have to disallow the goal. The problem is that forces VARs on every goal to look at what body part the ball went in off.
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“Most times it’s dead obvious it has come off the head or the foot.
“But there’s a fair number of situations where it is close to hitting the arm. The VAR has to look at it from different angles.
“There might be six angles focusing in on the player and the first three might not be conclusive.
“So they look at camera No 4.
“If they only look at the first three and say ‘check complete’ and camera four shows it came off the arm, that’s a problem
“If you were only to penalise when the attacker deliberately handles the ball or makes himself unjustifiably big — and not have that forensic examination which p* people off — you could ‘check complete’ it more quickly.
“It is a law I would definitely look to change. So Pro Ref and the Premier League are going to try and lobby for that to be changed.”
Williams said: “It’s a goal. VAR is for when there is a clear and obvious error — that is not clear and obvious.
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“At not one moment did I think I handballed it. I headed it in between my arms.”
Had the Prem adopted the Fifa-style connected ball chip technology — being used by LaLiga — VAR Bankes would have been alerted to a handball instantly, rather than having to rely on obscured images