Three more Premier League VAR errors have been confirmed by the Key Match Incidents panel, taking the season total to 23 and deepening scrutiny of a system that is moving further away from consistency than its defenders would like to admit. The latest findings include another major call against Everton, who were denied a penalty in their 3-3 draw with Manchester City at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
That missed call mattered because David Moyes’ side led 3-2 when Bernardo Silva held back Merlin Rohl from a corner, a tangle that referee Michael Oliver did not see. VAR Paul Howard decided the holding happened before the ball came into play and did not recommend a penalty, but all five members of the KMI panel disagreed and said there was a clear, sustained holding offence that continued as the corner was taken and the ball entered play. Manchester City later equalised deep into stoppage time through Jeremy Doku. Moyes said after the match: “If that doesn't get given as a penalty, then it's an absolute free-for-all from now on.”
The Everton decision was not an isolated correction. It was the third time this season the club should have been awarded a penalty through video review, after earlier denials in a 1-0 home loss to Arsenal and a 2-1 defeat at West Ham. Everton are the only team not to receive a VAR intervention in their favour this season, a statistic that will sit uneasily with anyone trying to sell VAR as a tool for fairness rather than a source of fresh grievance.
The panel’s latest review also included a unanimous 5-0 view that Bournemouth’s 29th-minute penalty against Crystal Palace should have been overturned in Bournemouth’s 3-0 home win. Marcos Senesi went to ground claiming contact from Dean Henderson, but the panel said the goalkeeper dropped the ball, reached for it and Senesi went down under very minimal contact. Referee Rob Jones had awarded the penalty and VAR Peter Bankes upheld it, yet the panel said the referee’s call was wrong and that VAR should have intervened to recommend a review.
The numbers underline the scale of the problem. The 23 VAR errors logged by the panel this season represent a 35% increase on the same stage last season, when there had been 17. It is still below the 30 recorded in 2023-24 at this point, but the direction of travel is hard to ignore. Of the 23 errors, three involved penalties, and two of those should have been given for holding offences. That puts the focus squarely on the limits of what officials can see in a crowded box, especially when judgement turns on the exact moment a foul begins.
The KMI panel reviews major VAR decisions in the Premier League and its findings do not change results, but they do shape the argument around whether the process is working. Everton’s case was especially awkward because the VAR judged the holding had occurred before the corner was taken, a technical reading that the panel rejected. In practice, that is the kind of distinction that decides whether a team leaves with two points or none, and whether a manager spends the next week explaining a missed opportunity rather than a result he thinks should have stood.
For Everton, the complaint is no longer about one bad call. It is about a run of them, and about being the one club yet to benefit from a VAR correction in their favour. For the Premier League, the problem is bigger than a single penalty: the system is generating more errors, not fewer, and the latest panel findings will only sharpen the question of how much confidence supporters are meant to place in it.
