Everton should have been given a penalty during their 1-0 loss to Arsenal on December 20, it has been ruled.
Thierno Barry went down when his boot was kicked by Gunners defender William Saliba in the 58th minute but referee Sam Barrott decided not to award a spot-kick.
David Moyes was left annoyed and had Everton equalised from the penalty and earned a point, they would currently sit seventh in the Premier League rather than eighth.
The Premier League’s Key Match Incidents Panel has voted 3-2 that Barrott’s decision was incorrect. Moreover, the panel voted 3-2 than VAR Michael Salisbury should have sent Barrott to the monitor to change his call.
‘Saliba carelessly kicks Barry with no contact on the ball,’ three panel members noted, labelling it a clear and obvious error.
On the other hand, ‘there was not enough impact and a delayed reaction’ according to the two panellists who supported Barrott’s decision.
The Premier League say Everton should have been awarded a penalty for William Saliba’s foul on Thierno Barry – but it wasn’t given at the time
Moyes did not comment directly on the incident at the time but after Fulham were awarded a match-winning penalty for a similar offence two days later, he said: ‘I was half-choking last night when I saw the decision given and ours wasn’t.
‘It feels as though certain clubs get those decisions and other clubs don’t. We seem to be on the latter side of that.
‘There was one earlier in the season at Brentford with [Virgil] van Dijk which was quite similar and I think eventually it was given. We are disappointed it wasn’t given on the night and we are looking at others which have been.’
Moyes does not feel that the referees’ chief are particularly approachable. When asked whether he might complain to them, he said: ‘I don’t really know. They don’t make it easy whatever you want. They don’t want to have a conversation about it really. They will have [one], but they don’t want to because they’re finding it probably very difficult to explain things.’
The Scot even voiced concern that the referee hadn’t penalised his own team quickly enough.
Arsenal won the match thanks to Viktor Gyokeres’ penalty, scored after Jake O’Brien’s ludicrous handball with his hands raised high in the air. Moyes said the ‘more worrying thing’ was that the officials had missed that live, with Barrott only giving the spot-kick afetr being told to review the incident.
‘Surely the on-field referee didn’t need VAR to decide that Jake had his two hands up in the air? And that’s me going against my own team,’ said Moyes.
David Moyes said he was ‘half-choking’ when Fulham were awarded a penalty for a similar offence by Nottingham Forest two days later
‘Why did he need to wait on VAR to make that decision? He had to go to the pitchside monitor. What was the linesman doing on the side? The linesman was behind it where he must have seen his arms going up, but he didn’t make the call.
‘The point I’m making is that surely they should be making the call. Maybe he didn’t see [William] Saliba kicking, but the consistency comes from those sort of actions – have you seen if he kicked through the back of someone’s leg or he gets there first?
‘I don’t want to see soft penalty kicks. I’m not a believer of soft penalty kicks, maybe that was my thinking after the [Arsenal] game, but after what I saw last night, I’m saying: “Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be, why are we not getting the same decisions?”‘
