Dermot Gallagher issues verdict on VAR issues and controversial incident during Tottenham vs Aston Villa

Aston Villa picked up a huge away win over Tottenham on Sunday to jump into the top four, securing a memorable comeback in North London. Unai Emery's men went behind in the 22nd minute, with Giovani Lo Celso on target, but Pau Torres scored in stoppage time of the first half and Ollie Watkins won it for Villa just after the hour-mark.

Though, the win was not without its controversy, even if it wasn't neccesarily due to decisions made on the day the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The issue that was an element of the VAR system was not available for the first 10 minutes of the game, with the screen at the side of the pitch unavailable for use.

Decisions in the first 10 minutes could still be checked by the VAR officials, but if a controversial incident had occured, the referee, Robert Jones, would not have been able to review the decision himself at the side of the pitch, as is usually the case. It's likely the decision would have been made by the VAR official alone.

"The VAR was working, all the feed was going into Stockley Park, they could see everything. The problem was, it was not relaying to monitor in the ground," former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher explained to Sky Sports. "So if there was an incident that the VAR checked, the VAR operator would have had to relay back to the referee what he had seen, the referee could not go to the monitor himself."

On the Premier League protocol on starting games without full VAR operations, Gallagher added: "The referee is there to referee the game, the VAR is a back up, it is not there to referee the game. What you would say is it only lasted 10 minutes, then it was corrected, but for those 10 minutes they were at the mercy of the VAR, he had to make a key match incident rather than the referee going to the screen.

"Everybody knew, everybody in the ground, they were checking everything that was going on, it was just that if you had an incident like the Martial one, the referee had no facility to go to the screen. But that did not occur during that 10-minute period"

One decision that did divide opinion among some fans was a potential handball and then a potential foul on Tottenham star Bryan Gil, but VAR reviewed the incident and decided it was not enough to give a penalty on either count. "It [VAR Jarred Gillet] cleared it," Gallagher added. "It looked and then looked again and just felt there was not enough there for a penalty or a red card. It always looks worse when you have a tall player up against a smaller player like [Gil], but it was checked and they felt there was no offence."