PGMOL has responded to claims that Howard Webb “influenced” the decision to red card William Saliba during last weekend’s Premier League clash between Arsenal and Bournemouth.

In the 30th minute of Saturday’s match at Vitality, Saliba received the first red card of his professional career after dragging Cherries striker Evanilson into Bournemouth’s half.

The French defender initially received a yellow card from referee Rob Jones, but after a lengthy on-field review by VAR, the card was changed to red.

Arsenal then fell three points behind as goals from Ryan Christie and Justin Kluivert sealed a 2-0 victory for Andoni Iraola’s side.

But arguably the biggest talking point of Saturday’s game was PGMOL chief Howard Webb, who could be seen talking on his phone during the VAR check for Saliba’s red card.

As the incident unfolded, former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher took to X, formerly Twitter, to raise the issue. “Was Howard Webb involved in making the decision regarding Saliba’s red card??” he wrote in a now-deleted post.

Richard Keys, the former Sky Sports presenter who now works for beIN Sports, also asked: “Who was Howard Webb texting? And why?”

After the full-time whistle, Sky Sports addressed the situation by stating that Webb could only listen to the communication between VAR and on-pitch officials during matches, rather than getting involved.

“There were one or two people that you might have seen on social media speculating about what Howard Webb was doing in the crowd, the head of PGMOL,” said host David Jones.

“He also has this earpiece, he has his phone out. But what we understand is that he is listening to the match feed from the VAR officials and their communications with the officials on the pitch, as we do as as broadcasters.”

Jones added: “He has no input, he doesn’t have the ability to talk to the officials who actually make the decisions.”

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Jamie Redknapp, who worked for Sky as a pundit, added: “He’s not trying (to influence things), he’s watching the game. For anyone to think (he would have) the audacity or the ego to think, ‘I’m going to influence this game’ – we’re talking about Premier League football now, I think it’s absurd for anyone to question that.

“He’s at the match, he’s listening to the audio. He can’t turn to the referee. We have the VAR there and everyone is watching him, why would he dream of getting involved?”

According to The timesreferees’ organization Professional Game Match Officials Limited also commented on the situation, insisting that Webb was simply listening to communications and had no input into the VAR decision to send off Saliba.