The Premier League’s Key Match Incidents Panel has ruled that one Match Round 4 VAR intervention was incorrect, saying the goal incident involving Erling Haaland and Enzo Fernandez should have been treated as a missed subjective offside in the attacking possession phase.
The weekly panel publication is part of the league’s new transparency drive in the 2026/27 season, with the KMI Panel reviewing key decisions from every match and setting out whether match officials reached the right call. In this case, the panel said a VAR review should have been recommended, and that the intervention to award the goal was wrong.
What the panel said about the goal incident
At 60 minutes in Match Round 4, Erling Haaland was in an onside position and Enzo Fernandez was in an offside position in the highlighted goal incident. The Premier League said: “A VAR review should have been recommended for a missed subjective offside in the attacking possession phase.” It added that “The panel unanimously felt that the VAR intervention to award the goal was incorrect.”
That is the key point here. This was not treated as a straightforward factual error, but as a subjective offside issue that should have triggered a review before the goal was allowed to stand. In other words, the threshold for VAR intervention was not met properly, according to the panel.
A week of tight calls and one overturned decision
Across Match Round 4, the panel reviewed 19 Referee KMIs and recorded one incorrect VAR overturn. The round also included other notable incidents, with the panel rating Taiwo Awoniyi’s challenge on Maxim De Cuyper at 52 minutes as a correct sending-off dismissal.
There was also a penalty incident at 54 minutes, when Ezri Konsa’s challenge on Dan Ballard led to a spot-kick. The panel said that decision was incorrect on the field, but not a clear and obvious error for VAR intervention. That distinction matters, because it underlines how the panel separates a poor on-field call from one that crosses the line into a VAR intervention.
Why the ruling matters
The Premier League says the weekly publication is intended to provide full transparency around Match Officials’ decisions, and the KMI Panel is its independent assessment of the biggest calls in each round. For this incident, the verdict is clear: the VAR overturn should not have happened.
That leaves the Match Round 4 offside error as a formal example of where the process did not work as intended. Over the 2026/27 season to date, the panel has reviewed 79 referee KMIs and deemed 89 per cent of on-field decisions correct, but this latest ruling shows that the scrutiny around VAR remains intense, especially when a goal hangs on the interpretation of a subjective offside.
Howard Webb, the Chief Refereeing Officer of Pro Ref, said viewers could see the decision-making process for the incident on Match Officials Mic’d Up. For the Premier League, that is now the point of the exercise: show the process, explain the standard, and accept when the panel says the wrong call was made.
