Question Number: 34392

Mechanics 10/24/2021

Shaun of Bromley, Kent England asks...

In the recent Arsenal v Aston Villa match the ref viewed the VAR monitor 55seconds after contact was made and awarded a penalty deep into injury time. The penalty was saved but the rebound was slotted home, the Villa manager questioned why the whistle wasn’t blown after the penalty was saved for half time, but am I correct in believing that the clock would have been reset to the time when the penalty challenge occurred and thus an additional min of 55 seconds should exist after the penalty save.

Answer provided by Referee Richard Dawson

HI Shaun,
an interesting question

An extended PK occurs with NO time remaining on the clock.
In cases where it IS an extended PK the referee WOULD make that KNOWN to the teams , because NO FOLLOW UP PLAY is permitted because only the PK kicker can touch/kick the ball ONCE to give it momentum & only the oppossing keeper can try to stop it

Given the PK kicker was permitted to follow up ,AFTER, the Keeper made a brillant save indicates clearly this was NOT an extended PK! Play is live, the keeper's ball touch, releases the PK kicker of the 2nd touch restriction and a goal results!

A referee at their discrestion, can stop the clock & add for time wasted for many things. .

The referee did not blow for the whistle full time at the half before his review. He stopped play to review the VAR request. We can not be sure how much extra time remained but he would certainly stop the clock from when he reviewed the foul?

Time would not restart until the taking of the PK. It was only a few seconds before the goal occured, then there was a follow up a kick off with a few seconds of play before the half ended.

It is plausable the referee could have decided there was enough time remaining to allow for follow up play after the PK be it a few seconds or, as you thought, for the used up time from when the foul was missed to when he chose to review it.

Cheers

Answer provided by Referee Joe McHugh

Hi Shaun
The penalty kick was not an extended time one in which case there can be follow up play allowed after the kick.
It is an interesting point as to whether the play between the foul and the penalty kick being awarded is counted as time lost that can be added on? I suspect it is. We do know for certain that the referee must make full allowance for the time taken for each review and this will be from the time the review was signaled until play restarts. So if the referee took say 50 seconds from when he stopped play to carry out the review until it was ready to restart that 50 seconds is added on.
I personally don't like these long time gaps between the incident and the review being initiated. I would rather see play stopped in this case when the ball was cleared into the neutral zone and so what if it has to restart with a dropped ball. Referees don’t like to have to reverse decisions yet to my way of thinking the referee by missing an obvious foul has made a bigger error in judgement or mechanics that has to be corrected by VAR.

In this situation I think there was an early opportunity when the ball was cleared into a neutral zone to stop play rather than waiting for almost one minute to carry out a review.
Unlike the Manchester United V Leicester City penalty which was awarded at the final whistle this one was during play so additional time was added on for the review plus time lost.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NnhZOHHytos
At approximately 1.20 the incident is shown where the referee blows the whiistle to end the game yet VAR intervened. No follow could have been allowed in that case.

Answer provided by Referee Jason Wright

Hi Shaun,

Without seeing the incident, I'd agree with you.
Say there's 3min stoppage time. 2min there's an incident, play goes on for a minute then it goes back for review and a PK is awarded (note that this could also happen at grassroots if the ref misses an AR signal).

Effectively play stops at the time of the incident - 2min into stoppage - and the minute after hasn't been played, so you would still have a minute of time after that.

Even though I'd imagine the entire VAR + PK would probably take 3-4 minutes, you're still only playing an extra minute as that's all of the original playing time that was lost.

It would be no different if the PK was actually awarded promptly but after argument/setting up etc, an extra 3min had elapsed - you'll still play out the minute.

Answer provided by Referee Peter Grove

Hi Shaun,
This was evidently not a case of the referee deciding to extend time for the penalty to be taken. This can be seen from the fact that after the goal was scored, there was a kick off and play continued for a few seconds before the whistle finally sounded to end the first half.

The referee is the sole judge of time in a game and the referee in this case had evidently decided that time had not fully elapsed before play was stopped, since he allowed the kick off to be taken after the goal was scored.

This being the case, it was allowable for play to continue after the penalty was taken and for a goal to be scored from the rebound.