Burnley boss Vincent Kompany blasts VAR calls following costly Bournemouth defeat

Trailing 2-1 heading into the dying seconds, Sander Berge failed to force the ball over the line with two close-range efforts in quick succession.

However, upon review, Kompany believes a Bournemouth defender handled the ball inside the six-yard box prior to Berge stabbing over the bar.

Despite calls from the Burnley players to review the incident, no VAR check took place.

It came just a few minutes after Jay Rodriguez’ ‘goal’ was ruled out in farcical circumstances following a record seven-minute delay.

The substitute’s effort was initially ruled out on the field by the linesman, but it was immediately referred to David Coote and Marc Perry at Stockley Park.

Footage appeared to show Rodriguez was in an onside position, with green lines displayed, before the lines were redrawn before turning red – signalling he was offside.

Reflecting on the officiating controversy after the game, Kompany said: “At this moment in time I’m not going to have anything other than disappointment.

“I want to address the first thing for me which is the last thing that happened in the game, the handball situation in the box.

“Games get played on a knife-edge but I’m still trying to wrap my head around it as to what happened in that moment.

“We take five to seven minutes, I don’t know how long exactly, to review the offside, the line goes green which means goal, the line goes red which means no goal, and okay, I’m a person that believes they’ve taken their time because they want to come to the right decision. A decision gets given against us. It’s a tough one to take.

“But then when the situation happened in the last moment of the game and they don’t take time to review the handball, there’s no call to the referee to delay play when the players have called for it, the staff and the bench could see, we had a wide angle and we could see there was a handball.

“The ball comes down, it’s never touched by our player. It’s the hand of the player that brings the ball down in front of the goal.

“Imagine that hand is not there, it’s either a header or it goes out of play at the side, but it’s the hand that brings the ball down.

“But there’s no check, there’s no delay for the restart, the ball goes up the pitch and we lose the game.

“I’m trying to understand what happens in that moment. I know there are other events in the game that as coaches we’ll look back at, but it mixes a little bit with what happened against Nottingham Forest for us. There’s a hand that plays a part in the goal for Forest that gets allowed and a hand that plays a part in the second goal for us to win the game that gets disallowed.

“We get a letter and an apology, which I’m fully respectful of because the officials are making a really good and conscious effort to be transparent and open with us, so I commend that.

“But this moment at the end, I’m trying to understand what happened.”

Kompany also revealed he sought out the officials after the game to get clarification.

“For the first time in my career as a manager I’ve actually politely and calmly gone and asked for a word of explanation from the officials,” he added.

“They were very open with me. They seemed surprised by the fact that we would have liked this to go to VAR.

“No one in VAR has told them there was something to review and when you look at it, it’s as blatant as it can be.

“There’s an arm’s length above the head that brings the ball down. What have we missed? At least give people the opportunity to check if we’ve missed something.

“I’m fairly confident this check would have taken them 15 seconds.”