Why VAR gets involved in some penalties but not others

If Doku gets a penalty, what is the difference with Burn’s challenge on Ouattara, which was not given and meant the Brentford player was booked for a dive?

It comes back to “contact with consequence” and guidance which asks the VAR to consider the motivations of the attacker and how they go to ground.

Doku went down in a way which would be expected for the contact, but Ouattaro threw himself theatrically to the floor. That counts against an attacker on a VAR review.

We can look at a penalty Arsenal were given against Leeds by the on-field referee in August when Max Dowman had his foot touched by Anton Stach.

The Premier League’s key match incidents (KMI) panel voted 3-2 that this should not have been a spot-kick, noting: “There is slight contact made by Stach on the toe of Dowman’s foot, with the significance and impact of the contact debated by the panel. The panel felt that the referee’s call of a penalty was incorrect (but) unanimously agreed that VAR was correct not to intervene.”

The wording is part of the reason fans cannot get fully on board with VAR. So was the Stach decision an error? Yes, but not enough to be corrected.

In basic terms, Ouattara and Dowman are very similar, so the KMI panel is unlikely to feel it was a mistake not to give the penalty on the field.

Burn conceded a penalty later in the second half when he kicked the boot of Ouattara (you could see this on the replay) as he moved into the area. While contact was small, it was present, and it led to a second yellow card too.