Man City were victims of complete and utter VAR farce as ref waits three minutes to get WRONG verdict on Otamendi handball

MANCHESTER CITY were the victims of a complete and utter VAR farce.

If I was refereeing and I saw the first penalty incident after City's 3-2 win at Schalke, I would be furious about that decision.

Firstly, because the pitchside monitor was not working and, secondly, my colleague in the VAR room deemed that a deliberate handball from Nicolas Otamendi.

Law 12 says there has to be a deliberate movement of the arm/hand towards the ball.

Irrespective of the position of the arm/hand, it doesn’t necessarily mean an offence has been committed.

In my opinion it is NOT a deliberate handball.

Man City faced a long delay before the verdict, even though the Nicolas Otamendi 'handball' was not a clear and obvious error, in fact probably not deliberate

Unlucky Nicolas Otamendi appears to pull his arm away from the fierce shot

The shot from Daniel Caligiuri is coming at pace and Otamendi is trying to take his arm out of the way — so therefore it cannot be a deliberate handball.

If VAR took almost three minutes to look at the incident then it CANNOT be deemed ‘a clear and obvious error’.

City defender Otamendi was cautioned for that incident and his misfortune was compounded when he was harshly cautioned again for a careless challenge and sent off.

Spanish ref Carlos del Cerro Grande was meant to be able to view the monitor for subjective calls like this — but Uefa said the technology was not working.

Schalke's Nabil Bentaleb stayed calm for the first of his two successful penalties but Manchester City fought back to claim a late 3-2 first-leg victory in Germany

Man City were stunned by the spot-kick verdict against Nicolas Otamendi - - enabling Nabil Bentaleb to bag the first of his two penalties

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