Wayne Rooney and Alan Shearer were left stunned by a decision during Newcastle’s win at Aston Villa on Saturday, with the former claiming it was one of the worst he has ever seen.

It was a chaotic FA Cup contest at Villa Park, where the home side took the lead through Tammy Abraham on 14 minutes before shooting themselves in the foot.

Goalkeeper Marco Bizot made the wild decision to sprint out of his goal and take out Jacob Murphy on the counter-attack, earning himself a straight red card just before half-time.

Newcastle made the most of the advantage, with two goals from Sandro Tonali and a third from Nick Woltemade giving them a 3-1 win and put them into the hat for the fifth round draw.

Eddie Howe’s men may have thought it wasn’t going to be their day when one decision went against them at 1-0 down, though, which the officials got badly wrong.

Kieran Trippier put in a cross from the right which Villa defender Lucas Digne handballed.

The officials spotted the infringement, but despite the Frenchman standing well inside the penalty area and never leaving it, they gave a free-kick instead of a penalty.

Newcastle actually went on to score from the free-kick, so it did not cost them, but it was a bizarre mistake, which neither Rooney nor Shearer could believe a top level referee would make.

‘I think you can be critical of officials or you can praise them, either way,’ Rooney said on the BBC. ‘But that decision is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in football. At no stage was Digne out the penalty box, I think he’s three or four yards inside the penalty box!

‘The linesman is just in front of us and you can clearly see how much he is in the penalty box.

‘The referee looked like he blew and it looked like he was listening to someone in his ear, so I’m assuming the linesman has give that decision and it’s an absolute shocker.’

Shearer feels it is a sign of the times, with referees and their assistants so used to being able to rely on VAR that they are now lost without it.

There was no VAR in the FA Cup tie as it was before the fifth round and the lack of support left the officials looking foolish.

‘There’s perhaps a small excuse for the referee to not see this, and I’m being kind to him, but there is no excuse whatsoever for the assistant, who is 10-15 yards away,’ said Shearer. ‘Nick Greenhalgh, who had an absolute nightmare today. He’s 15 yards away from that, goodness me.

‘If you ever needed any evidence of the damage VAR has done to the referees, I think today is a great example of that. These guys look petrified to make a decision today because they didn’t have a comfort blanket. That’s the damage its done to the officials.

‘For me, they’re actually getting worse. I really don’t think that’s a difficult decision at all, in fact it’s easy. At this standard, that has to be given. There’s no excuse for the assistant not to tell his referee, he’s got that totally wrong.’

It was not the only error of the game as Abraham’s opener was offside and Newcastle boss Howe agrees with Shearer that officials rely too much on technology.

‘I think there’s an argument to say that, because when VAR is there, there’s always a, ‘Well, I won’t give that, but let’s check it’,’ he said.

‘And I think then your decision-making maybe isn’t as sharp as it may normally have to be, so maybe there’s a difference there.

‘I’m always torn on VAR. I said this many times because I still love the emotion, even tonight, when a goal is given and you don’t see a flag or a referee, it’s a goal, and no one’s going to take it away from you.

‘That joy that you get in that moment, I still really love and VAR takes it away. But then on the other side, I was wishing there was VAR on the first goal against us, and probably throughout that game.’

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