Gary Lineker at a loss to explain ‘bizarre’ incident during Liverpool draw on Sunday

Gary Lineker couldn’t get his head around one ‘bizarre’ incident as Liverpool dropped more points in the Premier League on Sunday.

Cody Gakpo’s goal in second-half stoppage time seemed to have given the Reds a last-gasp victory at Craven Cottage, but there was a further sting in the tail as Harrison Reed’s 97th-minute howitzer ensured that the spoils would be shared.

The away team’s equaliser was a bone of contention for Fulham, with Florian Wirtz appearing to be narrowly offside as the ball was played into him before finishing past Bernd Leno. The assistant referee had raised his flag, but a VAR review saw that decision overturned.

Lineker surprised by ‘bizarre’ decision on Wirtz goal

In reviewing the weekend’s Premier League action on The Rest Is Football, both Alan Shearer and Lineker seemed surprised that the German’s goal was awarded.

The ex-Newcastle striker said: “In football, you are talking fine margins. Fine margins helped them get the Wirtz goal because, looking at that, I thought it was offside.”

The former Match of the Day host replied: “That was bizarre, wasn’t it? The line on the pitch was exact…maybe the line was a bit [skewed], I don’t know, because they’ve got this automated thing that we’re trying to trust.”

When Micah Richards pointed out that the technology for adjudicating on potentially offside goals is ‘semi-automated’, Lineker wryly remarked: “Semi-automated – does that give them a way out?”

Liverpool benefit from marginal tolerance level

Wirtz did seem to be just offside, and any dismay from Fulham over the goal being given is understandable, although BBC reporter Dale Johnson explained that it was awarded due to a tolerance level on marginal calls even since the introduction of semi-automated technology.

Lineker referenced the latitudional markings on the Craven Cottage pitch which seemed to indicate that Liverpool’s number 7 was ahead of the last defender by a foot, although that still met the threshold for a sufficiently tight margin for the goal to stand.

It ultimately ensured that, as frustrating as the draw undoubtedly was for the Reds, at least they came away with one point rather than none, thus stretching our unbeaten run to nine matches, the longest we’ve had all season.

Despite that, there’s no disputing that Sunday was a case of two points dropped rather than one gained, with John Aldridge reluctantly conceding that the champions are now realistically aspiring to simply finish inside the top four this term.

A disputed decision helped Liverpool to emerge with one point on Sunday, but when so many of our matches are hanging in such a delicate balance, another day could well see us come out on the wrong side of such ‘fine margins’, as Shearer put it.

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