Referee Michael Oliver has admitted his failure over Virgil van Dijk’s October injury.
Van Dijk is continuing to recover from knee ligament damage sustained in an early collision with Jordan Pickford during Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Everton.
But despite the Reds defender limping out, Oliver and VAR operator David Coote instead awarded a free kick to the hosts for an offside in the build-up.
Pickford faced no retrospective disciplinary action from the Football Association but match official Oliver concedes he made an error at the time.
“We have all, myself included, not thought about the challenge as much as we should have done,” he told the Daily Mail.
“We could still have given offside and sent Pickford off.
“What I was surprised about looking at it afterwards was that nothing was expected on-field in terms of a red card. None of the players were asking for that.
“We got sucked too much into going step by step as opposed to thinking of the bigger process, which was considering the challenge as well and not just the fact it can’t be a penalty.
“We should have restarted with the offside, as we did, but with a different punishment for Jordan Pickford.”
Oliver also admitted that he had been preparing to award a penalty to Jurgen Klopp’s side had Van Dijk not been in an offside position at the fatal moment.
He added: “The thought initially was ‘it can’t be a penalty because it’s offside so we need to check the offside first’.
“I think I said to the VAR, ‘if it’s not offside, I’m going to give the penalty’. I have watched it back so many times.
“I genuinely don’t think Pickford has done anything apart from try to spread himself but he did it the wrong way, as the injury has shown.”