Five conclusions: Costly penalty decision hits survival hopes

Josh Koroma's late goal looked to have secured victory at Bristol City, but a nonsense handball decision deep into stoppage time cost the Terriers two points

1. There’s only one place to start

Andre Breitenreiter raised eyebrows at his press conference on Friday lunchtime by asking the EFL to consider bringing VAR into the Championship. His plea followed the (very marginal) offside call that went against Town in their game with West Brom and the (genuinely debatable) penalty decision given at Preston on Tuesday night.

We expected that suggestion to go down badly with Huddersfield Town fans, for whom the scars of the 2022 play-off final are still fresh.

We wonder what they would say now. Regular readers will know how rarely we bristle at officiating, and how loath we are to allow it to become an excuse. Our usual outlook is that if a team fails to do enough over 89 minutes to counter-act something going against them in the other one, the sense of injustice can only extend so far.

But this was the most justifiable and high-stakes sense of upset that Town have experienced since that trip to Wembley nearly two years ago. Ollie Turton, returning to action after 14 agonising months out with back-to-back knee injuries, had his moment ruined as he was punished for the crime of not having detachable arms.

We don’t quibble with added time having extended that far: much of the five added minutes were taken up by a pair of long stoppages, first at a Town free kick that they dallied over, then for a Bristol City injury.

Nor do we question that the ball may have hit Turton on or around the elbow as he slid in to block Cameron Pring’s cross. But his arm was not outstretched, he was not making his body unnaturally bigger, and he had no intention of trying to ride his luck by sticking out an arm and hoping it went unnoticed. There was nothing about the incident that should have led the officials to make such a decision.