The Premier League's Independent Key Match Incidents Panel has ruled the referee and the VAR were correct to award Newcastle United's winning goal against Arsenal.
You are missing a key issue in your comment. The introduction of VAR has impacted how refs call games. We see this clearly with offsides - they generally let the play continue because they know VAR will make the definitive call. It’s not that hard to imagine that refs are also hesitant to call other things or less likely to give red cards because they expect that VAR will let them know if they need to change it. Except VAR isn’t telling them because their bar for “clear and obvious” is hard to gauge and ever moving.
If you have the whole panel saying that Bruno’s elbow was a red but half saying it wasn’t “clear and obvious”, then how you define “clear and obvious” is an issue. Especially because it was “clear and obvious” to review Havertz tackle… but then again it wasn’t so obvious because the ref on the field didn’t deem it was a red… so how is that obvious when the ref on the field disagrees?
You are missing a key issue in your comment. The introduction of VAR has impacted how refs call games. We see this clearly with offsides - they generally let the play continue because they know VAR will make the definitive call. It’s not that hard to imagine that refs are also hesitant to call other things or less likely to give red cards because they expect that VAR will let them know if they need to change it. Except VAR isn’t telling them because their bar for “clear and obvious” is hard to gauge and ever moving.
If you have the whole panel saying that Bruno’s elbow was a red but half saying it wasn’t “clear and obvious”, then how you define “clear and obvious” is an issue. Especially because it was “clear and obvious” to review Havertz tackle… but then again it wasn’t so obvious because the ref on the field didn’t deem it was a red… so how is that obvious when the ref on the field disagrees?