Easter weekend served up a dramatic weekend of Premier League action and as always there is no drama without refereeing controversy. Arsenal may have dropped a valuable two points at Liverpool whilst Spurs escaped with all 3 points against Brighton. Before we get there we have to remember it was a busy midweek and we have to address that too.
The incident: Kai Havertz opens the scoring for Chelsea as Alisson’s save rebounds onto his arm. The goal is disallowed.
Havertz is very unlucky here, but it is the correct decision. When a handball offence is committed by the eventual goal scorer or deliberately by an offensive player per the rules the goal must be disallowed. The ball clearly bounces against Havertz’s arm meaning that the goal is rightly chalked off.
Interestingly enough we saw two similar incidents in the Spurs – Brighton game as Karou Mitoma and Alexis Mac Allister both had goals disallowed for the same reason. In those cases, however, the handball offence was not as clear but it shows the precedent being consistently applied.
The incident: Pierre-Emile Højbjerg trips Karou Mitoma in the penalty area, and a penalty is not given.
The decision not to award Brighton a penalty was so egregious that PGMOL issued an apology to the Seagulls. Mitoma is clearly tripped by the Spurs man, but referee Stuart Atwell decided the contact was not enough to justify Mitoma’s fall therefore he would not be awarding the penalty.
This also presented a problem for the VAR on the day. The VAR is usually meant to intervene when there is something the referee has clearly missed but as Atwell had seen the foul and decided it was an overreaction from the Brighton winger, it meant the VAR had little room to influence the decision.
Even if the VAR disagreed the final decision rests with the centre referee and this may indicate a change in the protocols is necessary to give the VAR a bit more power to correct wrong decisions.
The incident: Rob Holding trips Diogo Jota in the area. A penalty is awarded.
This was a very subjective decision in my opinion but based on the precedent this season it was never going to be overturned. There was clearly contact which meant that once Jota went down, and the referee gave the penalty there was no chance of VAR intervention. It was a clumsy challenge from Holding and he was not even close to the ball.
