The Professional Game Match Officials Board, PGMOL, which oversees all refereeing in England has apologized to Everton and coach, Frank Lampard over the penalty incident at the weekend that denied them a vital point against Manchester City.
Everton were denied the opportunity of levelling the scores late in the second half when Rodri clearly handled the ball inside the area. Chris Kavanagh who was on VAR duty decided there was insufficient evidence to show the ball had hit the City midfielder on the arm after centre referee Paul Tierney missed the incident.
The decision irked, first of all, Everton assistant, Ashley Cole who confronted Tierney after the game and was handed a yellow card for his effort, and then Frank Lampard who said the point missed could be what decides the fate of his team as they try to avoid relegation.
Lampard had said during a post-game interview that upon confronting the referee, he was told there was no offside against Richarlison before the handball incident, which was the initial assumption.
“There is no doubt, there is no probably to it. The decision is incredible, incredible, and that loses us the opportunity to get what we deserved.” He said
“That’s a VAR call. That’s Chris Kavanagh, I spoke to the referee and they know it is a penalty, the question is that is it offside and it wasn’t.
“That’s the reason we have VAR. It wouldn’t have needed more than five seconds to know it was a penalty. He [Kavanagh] should have either told the referee to give it or told him to go look at it.
“We’ve lost a point because of a professional who cannot do his job right. You start searching for whys and I can’t think why. It is so incompetent to get it wrong.
“Pep [Guardiola] will know, Everton fans will know, Man City fans will know, it was the clearest penalty you could give: arm is out — great, below the sleeve — great, I was waiting for the penalty.
“Incompetence at best, at worst who knows? I’ll wait for the statement or apology they do when things are wrong but it will mean nothing.”
The PGMOL through its general manager, Mike Riley, personally called Everton chairman Bill Kenwright and manager Frank Lampard to apologise and admitted a mistake had been made by the VAR.
City went on the win the game and extended their lead at the top of the table to six points ahead of Liverpool. Everton remain 17th and a point from safety.
Apologising sets a bad precedent – Darren Bent
Former England forward, Darren Bent thinks PGMOL’s apologising sets a bad precedent because errors in judgement are part of football and apologising for every mistake made by a referee casts doubt over the credibility of the league.
“These things happen. It’s unfortunate that it happened to Everton. They should have had a penalty. Someone made a mistake, but you’ve got to just live and die by that decision and move on to the next”, Bent said in an interview with TalkSport
“The moment you start apologising for this, apologising for that, you set a precedence. So, no! I think it’s poor that they’ve [PGMOL] come and did that [apology].