And this is why having VAR refs be PGMOL refs is a bad idea. He straight up admitted what fans have been criticizing about VAR ever since it was implemented in the PL: the VAR refs care more about making their friends look/feel good than about getting the call on the field correct.

This moron doesn't understand a very basic concept: helping your friends in need doesn't always require making them look good. If the mindset was you have your friends watching your back so your mistakes get covered, then VAR would work a whole lot better. Instead, they care how they look not how they perform.

PGMOL or whatever the fuck it's called, isn't fit for service.

“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.”

I mean... that's outrageous, right? Wtf?

And why on earth would he admit it later??

Effective journalism. Someone asked him the right question in the right way, and he wound up volunteering something he might not have otherwise chosen to say.

That said, I think some of this is just reasonable openness and accountability. Given the game was effectively a full year ago and the issues with VAR from that game are still a somewhat spicy topic, it's obviously something he's been questioned on rather a lot - and given that PGMOL also released a statement, and he mentions that he spoke to on-field ref after the game ... it seems like he's already owned that mistake professionally and personally, so making the same acknowledgement of error publicly isn't that huge a step beyond that.

It was definitely a mistake that the fans deserved an accounting of, considering it's the exact sort of problem that VAR exists to address - and that it should have been a call, of some sort at least, was absolutely undebatable to anyone who'd seen it.

So, this whole time we’ve been watching the players weren’t part of the game, it’s the referees that mattered. Damn, how could I have been so stupid all these years!!! /s

He was busy fantasizing about his cameos on Ted Lasso.