‘Edge cases’ blamed for long VAR delay before City’s disallowed Semenyo goal

• Semi-automated offside technology was not available

• High number of bodies in the box prevented its use

Semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) failed during the Carabao Cup semi-final between Newcastle and Manchester City on Tuesday night, leading to a five-minute delay in ­ruling out an Antoine Semenyo goal.

The lengthy deliberation, that required VAR officials to ­manually apply the lines which found even­tually that Erling Haaland had ­influenced play from an offside position, became the major talking point of the game. City’s manager, Pep Guardiola, criticised VAR in his post-match interviews and said the offside ruling had helped his team to win because it had made his players “angry”.