Neil Warnock has told talkSPORT he puts the blame for last weekend’s Merseyside derby VAR controversy firmly at the door of referee chief Mike Riley.
The Middlesbrough manager has never been Riley’s biggest fan, and he has taken his latest pop at the ‘robotic’ PGMOL general manager in a stinging rant following the dramatic 2-2 draw between Liverpool and Everton.
Reds defender Virgil van Dijk is facing spending the rest of the 2020/21 season on the sidelines after he was scythed down in the box by a dangerous tackle from Toffees goalkeeper Jordan Pickford in the early stages of Saturday’s clash.
Van Dijk suffered a serious knee injury as a consequence of the challenge, but Pickford was spared a booking and did not even concede a penalty despite a VAR review.
The incident has led to further calls for a full review of the Video Assistant Referee system, with barely a weekend going by without a handful of controversial moments.
The scenes at Goodison have also led to abuse being fired at Pickford, which Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti condemned on Thursday and insisted the goalkeeper was left ‘very sad’ by Van Dijk’s injury.
Warnock branded the whole incident a ‘tragedy’, but doesn’t blame the player either.
He concede it was a ‘horrendous’ and ‘reckless’ challenge from Pickford, but believes Riley should shoulder most of the blame for VAR’s failures.
Warnock and Riley have previous, with the veteran manager branding him ‘a robot’ in the past.
And he told the talkSPORT Breakfast on Thursday: “All I can say is, and I’ve been saying this on the show for a while now, Mike Riley is in charge of the referees…
“I first had him when I played at Hartlepool, he refereed me, and this guy is black or white.
“He’s got no feeling for the game, he’s got no common sense, it’s just rules. That’s the rule, that will be adhered to.
“He’s in charge of the referees now and they referee and they deal with VAR as if it’s Mike Riley who has told them what to do, because there’s no common sense.
“You shouldn’t be able to look at an incident more than once or twice, then it’s not an obvious error. All referees should be going over to the monitors.
“I mean, the Van Dijk incident, what can you say? It’s a tragedy!
“I don’t know whether Jordan has even apologised, that’s not been in the papers yet, but that was just something horrendous, I’ve not seen much like that before.
“I honestly don’t think Jordan meant to hurt him, he’s just reckless.
“But you’re not going to get a simpler decision to make than that, and to miss it…
“To see your player like out for nine months or whatever it’s going to be, and not get any punishment, it’s not what VAR is all about.
“They really let themselves down this week.”