Peter Walton "disappointed" in Mike Dean as VAR controversy rocks referees
Former Premier League referee Peter Walton has hit out at Mike Dean over his "disappointing and harmful" comments about his time as a video assistant referee (VAR).
Dean admitted he once refused to correct an error while on VAR duty as he did not want referee Anthony Taylor to get "any more grief". Dean confessed to deliberately telling Taylor not to review an incident in Tottenham's 2-2 draw with Chelsea last season.
Shortly before Harry Kane scored a late equaliser for Spurs, Chelsea felt they should have been awarded a penalty after Cristian Romero pulled Marc Cucurella's hair inside the area and Dean said his decision not to ask Taylor to look at the incident again was "pathetic".
He said on Up Front with Simon Jordan : "I think I knew if I did send him to the screen … he’s cautioned both managers, he’s had a hell of a game, it’s been such a tough game end to end. I said to Anthony afterwards: 'I just didn’t want to send you to the screen after what has gone on in the game'.
"I didn’t want to send him up because he is a mate as well as a referee and I think I didn’t want to send him up because I didn’t want any more grief than he already had." The PGMOL have already hit back at Dean, stating: "We strongly refute any suggestions that VARs do not intervene, for whatever reason, when they have identified a clear and obvious error."
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And Walton has also slammed his former colleague, writing in the Times : "For Mike Dean to publicly acknowledge that he intentionally overlooked an incident and neglected to use the VAR technology to protect his 'mate' is disappointing and harmful to the game.
Fellow ex-referee Peter Walton has hit out at Dean over his comments (BT Sport)"That decision did a disservice to Anthony Taylor — the on-field official in Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur last season — as the wrong decision was reached and it has raised questions over the VAR process.
"Yet, in my experience working with him, Dean was an excellent on-field official who brought integrity and courage, which is why I was so shocked and disappointed to learn he acted in such a way. That decision contravened everything that referees are taught to do, and that was certainly not the Mike Dean I knew.
"However, the question that fans will inevitably be asking is whether this sort of behaviour is commonplace. But I am sure this incident is an anomaly and an outlier and in my experience as a referee I never experienced anything like it.
"Frankly, I am flabbergasted that a man with more than 500 Premier League matches could not come to the right decision — Cristian Romero clearly pulled Marc Cucurella’s hair while in his own penalty area."
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