Ref Watch: Harry Kane winner v Man City should have been disallowed as new Tottenham controversy emerges

Ref Watch: Harry Kane winner v Man City should have been disallowed as new Tottenham controversy emerges

Keith Hackett

Refereeing Consultant AUTHORITY Former FIFA Referee; Head of PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited). FOCUS Laws of the Game, VAR implementation, officiating performance, and PGMOL policy. THE AUDIT Keith utilises Statscore’s Officiating Telemetry, including Deep-Data Metrics like Incident Accuracy Rates, VAR Intervention Latency, and Official Positional Efficiency. He provides technical refereeing analysis to reveal the regulatory reality behind match-defining decisions.

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Keith Hackett has claimed Tottenham should have had their winner in their 3-2 victory over Man City on Saturday (19 February) ruled out.

Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, the ex-Fifa and Premier League referee claimed there was an offside in the build up before Harry Kane nodded home in injury time.

Dejan Kulusevski was played in behind by a ball over the top by Rodrigo Bentancur before providing the cross for Kane to secure Spurs the three points.

There did not seem to be a VAR check on his position and Hackett has questioned why the offside lines were not used.

"I thought Anthony Taylor did really well during the game," he said after analysing the footage with Football Insider correspondent Connor Whitley.

"This is a guy who is based in Altrincham but he's demonstrated clearly his impartiality and that's great credit to him.

"His work rate and fitness is top drawer. I would say that is the shortfall of many of the referees in the select group.

"There were two or three things that concerned me. I thought the third Harry Kane goal looked offside.

"I was surprised that they allowed that goal to stand. I had a suspicion about it, where were the lines?

"It doesn't matter if it is the third goal or the first goal, any goal has to comply with the laws. For me, that was a dodgy one.

"I like goals and I don't like ruling them out but that one looked offside and I'm convinced there was an offside there."

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