Comedian and actor Omid Djalili has fired back at Gary Neville after the former Manchester United defender branded Liverpool's response to PGMOL a mistake.
Neville was on commentary duty for Sky Sports on Saturday evening as the Reds took on Tottenham Hotspur and was initially vocal about the two major first-half decisions in the match. He stated Curtis Jones' sending off was 'never a red card', and later reacted to PGMOL's admission of their error to not allow a legitimate Luis Diaz goal by saying it was 'a horrendous' blunder.
24 hours passed and Liverpool decided to release a statement of their own. The message recognised the error though ultimately slammed VAR's failings and the damage it has done to the Premier League's sporting integrity.
Neville then struck a different tone with his response. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, he explained his empathy for the wrongdoing against his former rival - but also his belief that Sunday's club statement was 'a mistake' and a PGMOL apology should be enough to settle the matter.
His shift in perspective confused many and led to more social media disagreements. One of those who came out with a strong - if not the strongest - response to the footballer-turned-pundit was Djalili.
Quoting Neville's X post, he said: "Gary's hands are tied so he's spouting corporate nonsense here and minimising a major incident. I was at #CFCWHU [Chelsea vs West Ham] Sept last year what would have been a good last min West Ham equaliser was chalked off for a supposed foul by Jarrod Bowen on CFC keeper Mendy in the build up.
"The decision was scandalous and the referee's body PGMOL have since apologised for the decision. But judging a foul is NOT as clear cut as judging offside. This is the first time a goal has been wrongly chalked off on an offside decision.
"Football fans have reacted because you're either offside or you're not. As lovers of the game, we have every right to know exactly what went wrong. That it doesn't happen again is also how the game evolves."
The London-born comedian, who is a lifelong Chelsea supporter and a self-admitted Ipswich Town follower, then provided an analogy and demanded full transparency of Saturday's events, starting with publication of the officials' conversations.
"As an extreme example, if airlines said after every air crash 'it's a f@@k up! we've all done it' there would be no airline industry. The first phase of an investigation (yes the analogy fits as chalking off a good goal for offside is metaphorically a 'crash') is to obtain the data relevant to the mistake.
"For planes, it's the black box flight recorder. For Premier league football it's the conversation between VAR & the referee. This needs to be released into the public domain. The fact that they haven't means something very wrong has taken place.
"@LFC had a good goal wrongly chalked off against a close rival when down to 10 men which could have a massive impact on the season. As a club they have every right to ask for transparency - as in find out exactly what went wrong - and take it from there.
"In a post-VAR world we are in uncharted territory. Any outcome after such a mistake is on the table, even replaying the game, who knows? But an apology for 'human error' - which is precisely why VAR was introduced to guard against - now being used to draw a line under the incident? Not a chance in hell."