West Ham’s goal against Arsenal was correctly disallowed. The rest is just noise | Jonathan Wilson

A corner. A melee. Bodies everywhere. Blocks and tugs, pulls and shoves. A VAR decision. Fury. Empty noise. A title perhaps decided; a significant impact on the relegation battle. Shouting. Confused pundits ranting. Social media figures rallying to the side they were always going to take. Welcome to modern soccer.

After what looked like an injury-time equaliser for West Ham was ruled out on Sunday, Arsenal now need only to beat Burnley and Crystal Palace to be sure of their first Premier League title in 21 years. In the relegation scrap, West Ham are a point behind Tottenham, who play at home to Leeds, now safe, on Monday evening. But the big issue is a VAR decision. Of course it is: this is 2025-26.

Let’s begin with the basic point. Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya was fouled, if not by Pablo then certainly by Jean-Clair Todibo, who pulled his shirt. West Ham (and Manchester City by extension) could feel aggrieved had the potential equaliser been ruled out for the way Pablo’s arm stretched across Raya’s neck, which looked far worse in a still or slowed down image than it did it real time, where it became apparent that Pablo was bracing himself as Leandro Trossard barrelled into him, and Raya had run into him. But the Todibo pull is clear, and referees love shirt-pulls because they are definitive. A shirt was pulled: it was a foul, and so the goal was rightly disallowed.

And so we come to the other issues. Haven’t Arsenal got away with worse this season, most notably their goals against Manchester United in the opening weekend and against Aston Villa at the end of December? To which the answer is possibly, but it’s really not the job of Sunday’s referee Chris Kavanagh or VAR official Darren England to consider that. Their job is simply to consider the incident in question and make the best call they can: that one team got the benefit of a tight decision in the past, whether five minutes ago or five months ago, should make no difference.

What about all the other fouls going on simultaneously in the box? Why penalise that one? Because that’s the one that had an obvious impact on whether the goal was scored or not. There is a far bigger debate to be had on how soccer polices the box during set plays, where blocking, obstruction and holding are widespread. The way Declan Rice wrestled Konstantinos Mavropanos, for instance, cannot be allowed. But to complain about a player being penalised for tugging a goalkeeper’s shirt as he was about to try to catch a ball seems wilfully obtuse. What’s the alternative to picking on the incident with the most material impact? To see which happened first? VAR is intrusive and slow enough without endless analysis of a dozen different potential offences, trying to work out whether grappling incident A began a millisecond before pushing incident B.