Piers Morgan and Ally McCoist involved in heated argument over Newcastle VAR drama live on talkSPORT

Piers Morgan and Ally McCoist were involved in a heated argument about a controversial VAR decision between Arsenal and Newcastle.

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta described the decision to award Newcastle's winning goal against the Gunners as "disgraceful" and "embarrassing".

The north Londoners released a statement the following day supporting their manager’s complaints after Anthony Gordon's goal survived a triple VAR check.

Arsenal believed the ball had gone out of play in the build-up and that Gabriel was then pushed in the back, while VAR also looked at a potential offside on Gordon.

However, the officials were unable to determine the moment of contact when the ball was passed to the Newcastle striker and the goal was given.

On Monday Arsenal fan Piers Morgan and pundit Ally McCoist went head to head on TalkSPORT to debate whether the goal should have stood.

Morgan said: “I hate VAR with a rare enthusiasm. I think it is one of the worst things ever seen in sports because it sucked all the joy out of watching football. Every single great goal now, we all have to wait five minutes to see if it counts or not, and then someone’s nostril might mean it doesn’t.

“And in this case has there ever been a situation where three different times VAR should have said this is not a goal? Probably four, if you include the handball that we later established.

“The ball clearly went out. The foul was clearly a foul. Joelinton put both hands on the back of Gabriel and knocked him over. Clearly, it was offside. Clearly, you could see a handball as well. Four different reasons [...] and none of them get given because VAR is such a stupid system that none of it gets given.”

McCoist came back at Morgan and said: “Piers, I agree with your verdict on VAR. It’s driving me crazy.

😅 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝘆: “The key words are ‘clear’ and ‘obvious’. I don’t think any of them are!”

😡 𝗣𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀: “You don’t believe that! Everybody knows it’s a foul & that ball is 6 inches out.”

Ally McCoist had the nerve to go up against @PiersMorgan on #AFC’s controversial loss. pic.twitter.com/i11a1ruRi2

— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) November 6, 2023

“However, I think the keywords are ‘clear’ and ‘obvious’. I don’t think any of them are clear and obvious, and I genuinely believe it. If you put me in a corner I do think it was a foul. It was a shove right -”

Morgan replied: “So immediately you’ve disagreed with yourself. Clearly, it was a foul. Everybody knows it was a foul. Clearly from the still photographs you’ve seen that ball is about six inches out of play.

“Clearly it’s offside, but apparently VAR doesn’t have the technology now to tell us if a ball has gone out, or whether there’s been a blatant foul, or whether there’s a clear and obvious offside, or whether it’s a clear handball. To which my answer would be, ‘What’s the point of VAR?’

“It sucks all the joy out of it and it can make four decisions on one incident.”

SPORTbible are on WhatsApp! We've launched a dedicated news channel to send you the latest news, features and plenty more directly on WhatsApp and all you need to do to sign up is click through to our one-way broadcast channel here for 'SPORTbible News' to appear in the 'Updates' tab on your WhatsApp.