Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher has apologised to Liverpool and explained how "human error" by the VAR allowed for Jordan Pickford to go unpunished for his challenge on Virgil van Dijk.
The club confirmed on Sunday that the Dutchman will undergo knee surgery after damaging his ACL in Saturday's Merseyside derby.
The incident was reviewed by VAR but no action was taken on Pickford, whilst Van Dijk had to be taken off and replaced by Joe Gomez.
The challenge has received plenty of criticism on social media and Gallagher admitted the Everton goalkeeper should have seen red.
He explained how the VAR missed a crucial process in their decision making when reviewing the incident and apologised for the human error.
"I think the process was followed in some ways and it was flawed," Gallagher told Ref Watch.
"When you see this, they have to check for a penalty. There are three steps, is it onside, is it a penalty and is there any further sanction?
"What they have done, is it a penalty? It is a penalty so they check and it's offside which negates the penalty. They've gone from step two to step one, step two eliminates step one and it got overlooked to go to step three, which it shouldn't have done, we all know it should have been a red card.
"It was human error and that's all we can do is apologise for it. There's nothing more that can be said, the process was they went backwards to go forwards and then stopped at step two and it's as simple as that.
"The VAR hub is totally enclosed, nobody can access it. By the time you restart with the offside decision, even if you could get hold of them, it's too late because the game would have restarted and once it restarts you can never go back."
