A frantic VAR exchange — "Quick, quick, quick, quick! Go, go, go, go, go!" — has placed the Premier League's video officiating system under its harshest scrutiny yet, after video assistant referee Matt Donohue rushed through the review that awarded Erling Haaland's decisive goal in the Manchester derby.

Manchester City beat Manchester United 1-0, but the result has been overshadowed by a failure so significant that it has reignited the debate over whether football's obsession with speed is compromising the accuracy VAR was designed to deliver.

What went wrong inside the review

The core error was not merely one of haste. Donohue made a critical procedural misstep early in the review by stopping the video at the moment Josko Gvardiol touched the ball to cross into the area, then moving directly into the semi-automated offside technology. The VAR team should have assessed the entire passage of play — from the delivery of the cross to Haaland's header — before advancing.

That full picture would have revealed that Enzo Fernandez was three yards offside when he attempted to head the ball inside the penalty area. Because the sequence was not assessed in full, the events inside the box were only considered during the attacking phase — by which point Donohue and his assistant VAR, Blake Antrobus, were focused solely on whether Fernandez made contact with the ball, which would have created a new phase and placed Haaland offside.

Antrobus' contribution to the entire review amounted to uttering "no, yeah" about the potential touch — just one second before Donohue declared the final decision: goal, check complete. The AVAR's role is to provide checks and balances, to ensure nothing has been missed. That function was not fulfilled.

The pressure for speed

The urgency in Donohue's voice reflected a broader pressure that runs through the entire system. The Premier League made "more efficient application of VAR to reduce delays" a stated football principle for this season. Stakeholder surveys — including managers, coaches, and supporters — consistently flagged the speed of VAR decisions as the area most in need of improvement.

The numbers show a genuine reduction: average VAR delays have fallen from 46 seconds per game to 36 seconds season-on-season. But two of the most consequential VAR errors this season — the Haaland goal and the failure to award Arsenal a penalty at Aston Villa — both appear to have been influenced by reviews that were cleared too quickly.

Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca acknowledged the difficulty of the VAR's task, even as his side benefited from the error. "To make a decision in 10, 20 seconds is not easy for them," Maresca said. "Sometimes they make mistakes. I make mistakes, players make mistakes. It's part of our job."

Specialist VARs are no guarantee

Donohue is not an inexperienced official drafted in at random. He fits the Premier League's own definition of a VAR specialist — one of roughly ten officials to complete an accelerated training programme that began three seasons ago. Sunday's derby was his 65th appearance as a video official, and his development has been strong enough to earn him a place on the international list, with Uefa club competition assignments over the summer.

Yet errors persist across the system. Pro Ref's attempt to build a dedicated VAR cadre has had mixed results. Lee Mason and Mike Riley — the Premier League's only full-time retired-official VARs — were both dismissed by referees' chief Howard Webb within months of his appointment because of repeated errors. In Spain, La Liga operates with a full roster of officials who act exclusively as VARs and never take charge on the pitch, yet the controversy there is no less fierce.

There is also the role of a support VAR, seated in the operations room at Stockley Park, who can intervene on points of protocol. That official was aware of what was unfolding during the derby review. No action was taken.

Webb has acknowledged that the VAR team did not even consider Fernandez's position. The question now facing the Premier League is whether its drive for faster decisions has created an environment in which the discipline required for a thorough review is being quietly eroded.