Michael Owen baffled by Liverpool VAR decision vs Aston Villa - 'You cannot do that'

Liverpool extended its lead at the top of the Premier League table on Saturday night with an impressive and comfortable victory over Aston Villa, but former Reds striker Michael Owen thinks Arne Slot can count himself lucky.

Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah scored the only goals of the game while Caoimhin Kelleher continued to impress in Alisson Becker's absence. Slot was forced, however, to put on Conor Bradley after Trent Alexander-Arnold after the right-back suffered an injury early in the first-half.

The youngster looked comfortable throughout the game, but almost gave away a penalty in the second half of the game after a coming-together with Pau Torres.

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Bradley was at the front post marking Torres and appeared to pull on his shirt, causing the Villa man to throw himself to the ground claiming a penalty. Referee David Coote thought there was nothing to it and waved away the appeals, with VAR backing him up and allowing play to continue.

But Owen believes the decision was a 'stonewall' penalty and expressed how lucky Liverpool should feel. Speaking on Premier League Productions, the former striker couldn't believe Liverpool had got away with not giving away a spot-kick.

"It’s a penalty, you can’t do that," the former Liverpool striker explained.

"There’s just a blatant pull, Pau Torres is there at the front post, gets dragged out of that area with a shirt pull.

"If the ball goes to the back post and floats over everybody, then I think turn a blind to that, didn’t affect the play. That is a blatant pull. I’m astonished, once that went to VAR, astonished they didn’t give a penalty.

"I think that’s a stonewall penalty, personally. I don’t think there’s any debate in that, he literally pulls him out. It doesn’t matter if he’s pulling him for one minute or one second, he drags him out of it."