Good case made on the Guardian podcast, for why it shouldn't have been a penalty. Generally speaking should two players attempting to play the ball but both missing be a foul?
The key is whether Areola's contact was 'careless'. I'd say not it was just 50/50 and neither of them got it. Are heads given special status? Not when there's a genuine attempt to play the ball.
But even if it was careless, that's unlikely to be a clear and obvious error by the ref and so the VAR intervention wasn't correct. Unless of course he failed to see the challenge at all, which is pretty hard to believe given it happened 8ft off the ground.
Should probably let this lie, not going to help us admittedly.
Ps. Promise this is the last thing I'll post from the Guardian this week at least!
by _rhinoxious_
1 Comment
The Ramble also gave sympathetic analysis of the incident, if that helps anyone process it (I just think we’re a dead cert to go and if it wasn’t this decision, we’d have found another way to lose).