Some VAR weekends are dominated by one obvious mistake. This was not one of them.
At Anfield, the argument started with a throw-in that VAR could not revisit. At Old Trafford, everyone could see the ball hit Harry Maguire's arm, yet Manchester United's goal still stood. On Monday night, Arsenal saw one penalty decision corrected by VAR and another left alone.
France supplied the wildest finish of the weekend, while LaLiga offered another example of a question that keeps following video refereeing: how wrong does a decision have to be before VAR gets involved?
After [last week's Weekend Review](/articles/var-weekend-review-25-august-2026), these are the five incidents that left the most to argue about.
Liverpool 2-2 Nottingham Forest: should the throw-in have mattered?
Nottingham Forest's second goal at Anfield began with a quick throw from Liam Delap.
Neco Williams collected it, drove into the Liverpool penalty area and got to the ball before Alisson. Referee Sam Barrott awarded a penalty after the goalkeeper brought Williams down without playing the ball.
VAR checked the challenge and backed the referee. The Premier League Match Centre said there was clear contact from Alisson on Williams.
Morgan Gibbs-White scored from the spot.
So far, relatively straightforward.
The argument came from what happened seconds earlier.
Liverpool supporters questioned whether Delap had taken the throw legally, with replays appearing to show one foot coming off the ground. Former Premier League referee Graham Scott pointed out that the timing matters. If Delap released the ball before his foot lifted, the throw was legal.
There is not enough there to state as fact that Forest should have lost possession.
But imagine for a moment that the throw had clearly been illegal.
VAR still could not have changed it.
That is where the incident becomes more interesting than the penalty itself. VAR could inspect Alisson's challenge in detail, but it could not correct the restart that created the attack.
There is a reason football does not want every VAR review to become a search through the previous minute for something else that might have been wrong. At some point, the review has to stop.
The uncomfortable question is whether this is the right place to draw that line.
If an incorrect throw-in leads almost immediately to a penalty, should it really be untouchable?
Liverpool fans who found that distinction difficult to accept have a point, even if Delap's throw itself remains disputed.
Manchester United 5-2 Ipswich: everyone saw the handball, but the goal stood
Harry Maguire handled the ball before Manchester United's second goal against Ipswich.
That is not really in dispute.
Sasa Lukic's clearance struck Maguire's arm. Maguire then got the ball under control and shot. His effort was heading off target before a large deflection off Jacob Greaves sent it into the net.
The goal was recorded as a Greaves own goal.
VAR checked the handball and allowed the goal to stand.
This is where the law produces an outcome that is difficult to explain without sounding slightly ridiculous.
Had Maguire's shot gone straight into the net, his accidental handball would have ruled the goal out.
Because Greaves supplied the final touch, Maguire was not considered the immediate goalscorer. VAR also judged the handball to be accidental rather than a punishable handball offence.
Goal.
ESPN's refereeing analyst Andy Davies described it as a 50-50 call and said Ipswich could understandably feel hard done by. He also argued that disallowing the goal could have been a credible outcome had VAR judged the handball differently.
That is what makes this a genuine debate rather than a simple rules quiz.
VAR did not miss the handball. It saw it.
The question is whether football is comfortable with the consequence depending so heavily on a defender's deflection.
One touch from Greaves changed who was considered the goalscorer and, with it, the outcome of the review.
Technically defensible? Yes.
Intuitively satisfying? That is much harder to argue.
Aston Villa 0-1 Arsenal: VAR corrected one call, but did it miss another?
For most of Monday night's match at Villa Park, the major VAR moment looked unusually clean.
Bukayo Saka was fouled by Ian Maatsen as he approached the Aston Villa penalty area. Jarred Gillett pointed to the spot.
VAR showed that the foul had taken place just outside the box.
Penalty overturned. Free-kick to Arsenal.
There was little reason for complaint.
Then came the incident that deserves far more debate.
Deep into stoppage time, Bruno Guimarães appealed for a penalty after another challenge from Maatsen inside the area.
This time Gillett said no.
VAR James Bell checked the incident and did not send the referee to the monitor.
Arsenal won 1-0, which inevitably reduced the noise around the decision. Had Villa equalised afterwards, it might have become one of the biggest talking points of the weekend.
Former Premier League referee Andy Davies believes Arsenal should have had a penalty.
His assessment was unusually strong. Maatsen challenged Guimarães from behind, did not play the ball and made the contact inside the area. Davies described the on-field decision as a mistake and believed VAR should have intervened.
That makes the two Maatsen incidents an interesting pair.
VAR was willing to correct the first decision because the location of the foul was clear.
Later, with the decision resting on whether the challenge itself was bad enough to be a foul, the system stayed out of it.
The Premier League wants a higher bar for intervention this season. Fewer re-refereed incidents and more respect for the decision on the pitch sounds attractive.
But there is a price.
If a challenge can look like a clear penalty to an experienced former Premier League referee and still fall below VAR's intervention threshold, supporters are entitled to ask whether the bar has been pushed too high.
Rennes 3-2 Le Mans: two enormous reviews in ten extraordinary minutes
The closing stages at Roazhon Park were VAR chaos.
Rennes and Le Mans were level at 2-2 when Arnaud Nordin's shot struck Nathan Boissé's hand in stoppage time.
Referee Romain Lissorgue went to the monitor.
Penalty to Rennes.
Estéban Lepaul converted in the 96th minute and Rennes were suddenly 3-2 ahead.
Seven minutes later, Le Mans thought they had been given the chance to rescue a point.
Eliesse Mayenda challenged Antoine Rabillard in the Rennes area and Lissorgue awarded another penalty.
Then came another review.
This time the problem was earlier in the attack. Harold Voyer had been offside at the start of the move.
The penalty disappeared.
Rennes won 3-2.
There was nothing routine about the emotional swing. In the space of ten minutes, one team received a match-winning penalty after a review and the other had a potential equalising penalty taken away.
The offside gave VAR a factual reason to overturn the second decision. That does not make the moment any less brutal for Le Mans.
It also raises one of the questions supporters regularly struggle with. When a foul clearly happens in the penalty area, how far back should VAR be able to search for a reason to cancel it?
In this case, the answer was far enough to find Voyer's offside.
VarVote currently has an [open vote on the overturned Le Mans penalty](/decisions/rennes-v-le-mans-penalty-overturned-90-13-louis-mafouta).
Celta Vigo 0-2 Athletic Club: another penalty, another high bar
The Premier League is not the only competition where VAR's reluctance to intervene can create an argument.
Athletic Club were already 2-0 ahead at Celta when Nico Williams went down inside the penalty area.
No penalty was given.
VAR did not send the referee to the monitor.
Former international referee Iturralde González believed it was a penalty. His analysis was that Williams had been caught on the leg.
But he also made another point that gets to the heart of the modern VAR debate.
He did not expect VAR to overturn it.
In other words, it could be a penalty and still not be a sufficiently clear error for video intervention.
That distinction makes sense inside the VAR system. It is much less convincing when viewed from the stands.
Supporters were originally sold the idea that video technology would correct major refereeing mistakes.
Now we increasingly find ourselves discussing a different question: not whether the original decision was wrong, but whether it was wrong enough.
That happened at Villa Park with Guimarães.
It happened again at Balaídos with Nico Williams.
The fewer decisions VAR overturns, the more football preserves the authority and flow of the match.
The trade-off is that some decisions many people believe are wrong will deliberately be allowed to stand.
The weekend verdict: how much wrong are we prepared to accept?
This weekend did not give us five obvious VAR mistakes.
It gave us something more interesting.
At Liverpool, a potentially important incident sat outside VAR's reach.
At Manchester United, VAR saw the handball but the law still allowed the goal.
At Villa Park and Balaídos, experienced refereeing analysts believed penalties could or should have been awarded, yet VAR stayed out of both.
In Rennes, technology had no such hesitation. Two huge decisions were changed in stoppage time, including the potential equaliser at 3-2.
These are not versions of the same problem.
But together they expose the argument VAR still has not settled.
Football does not want video officials constantly re-refereeing matches. Supporters do not want five-minute forensic reviews of every contact. Referees need room to make decisions on the pitch.
Most people can agree on all of that.
The difficult part comes next.
How many questionable decisions are we prepared to accept in return?
Because a higher intervention threshold inevitably means some calls that look wrong will stay wrong.
For some supporters, that is a price worth paying for a less intrusive VAR.
For others, it defeats the reason the technology was introduced in the first place.
After a weekend like this one, there is plenty of evidence for both sides.