Troy Deeney believes match officials need to be held to account over poor decisions in the wake of the Merseyside derby controversy.
Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk suffered a serious knee injury following a reckless challenge by Jordan Pickford that somehow saw the Everton goalkeeper escape any punishment.
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Referee Michael Oliver did not deem the challenge worthy of a booking, while the Video Assistant Referee [VAR] on duty, David Coote, failed to check the incident, and Pickford has faced no retrospective action.
Watford striker Deeney, and new talkSPORT Breakfast signing, says players get frustrated when officials do not take responsibility and can’t understand why they are not made to explain the reasoning behind their decisions.
He told talkSPORT: “They’ve made the error. The process is there. They can say ‘go and have a look at it, it doesn’t look great’.
“Virgil is probably going to be out for six or seven months and all Liverpool got for it was an offside. In today’s game it’s really poor.
“The refs never come out. Before VAR, it was all ‘referees need help, they need the technology’.
“We’ve given them the help and now they blame the technology and not the refs. It has to go hand in hand.
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“If a player makes a mistake, there’s a reason why. He has to come out and speak about it or the manager has to speak about it.
“The referees never seem to be held accountable for what they do. There’s always an ex-referee who says ‘it’s this, this and this’.
“As players, you just get frustrated. If they just turn around and say ‘I got this one wrong’, no one can say anything. It’s done. It’s finished. Human error, it happens.
“When you look at that tackle, it does raise the question over when are we going to start holding referees accountable, especially the VAR referee. The two tackles in there were awful challenges.”
Deeney also revealed he has exchanged messages with Van Dijk and that he is a completely different person on and off the pitch.
The 32-year-old added: “He’s horrible to play against. He’s like two different people, on and off the pitch.
“I’ve had a few messages with him and spoken to him personally. When (Gerard) Deulofeu got injured he was messaging me to message him. That shows what he’s about.
“He probably wouldn’t want that out there. I’ve killed him a bit. He’s that kind of person.
“But when he’s on the pitch he just wants to win. That’s the best type of person really when they are different on and off the pitch.”
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