David Moyes was left fuming with the officials after West Ham were denied a late penalty in their 2-1 defeat to Liverpool, saying “VAR disrespected us”.
West Ham were convinced they should have had a late penalty when Thiago’s arm hit the ball as he fell in the area but, despite a VAR check, nothing was given.
There were arguments for and against it being given in a season when the handball interpretation has been in the spotlight but it was a decision which left Moyes infuriated – and ensured Liverpool made it 11 wins from their last 13 meetings with West Ham to maintain their revival.
Image: Thiago survived a penalty shout against him for handball
Law 12 in the FA rulebook explains that the action is not illegal if it is “a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation”.
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Moyes said: “You’ll probably hear them come out with some rubbish about, he needed to break his fall. Well if you lunge at the ball it’s your own fault for lunging and being out of control in the tackle. You can break your fall by sliding and having to put your arm down.
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“He lunged for the ball so, for me, that completely nullifies anything about breaking the fall. I think it’s a penalty kick. The hardest thing to take is the disrespect from VAR. That VAR wouldn’t have at least said to the referee this might be worth having a look. That’s telling me they don’t see that even close to a decision. I’m surprised.
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Highlights from the Premier League match between West Ham and Liverpool.
“A lot of football people have seen a lot worse than that recently.
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“Somebody in VAR didn’t have enough football knowledge to understand that this could be close.
“Whoever it was chose not to send the referee to look at it. VAR would have said ‘you should go check this out’
“So VAR showed no respect whatsoever to us for this could be close and worth a call.”
When asked if understands the rule, Moyes added: “I think I do quite well, yeah.
“I’ve had enough games, played football for a long time…I know when it happens. The handball rule has changed dramatically. I don’t like a lot of it, to be fair. Did the boy mean for it to hit his hand? No. But do I think he got his hand in the way of a ball going through made by his own actions.
“They [PGMOL] might need to apologise to the football club. We need to win points to be a Premier League team.
“I actually think we played well tonight. We didn’t get any points. We did a really good job.
“I’m not an expert on it [VAR reform] but I just think maybe if you’d been around football or seen it or played it a bit more you’d understand when people lunge – and that for that decision it’s because he lunged to get the ball. I totally understand breaking your fall, but he lunged, the ball had to be moved quickly because of the lunge, and because of that it meant his arms are out and it hits his arms. He’s got to take responsibility for his actions if that’s what you do.”
Klopp: We’re not in the race…yet
Liverpool moved up to sixth in the Premier League table with a third straight win as they narrowed the gap to those occupying the Champions League places to just six points although Manchester United and Newcastle have games in hand.
“I can’t see the race yet,” said Klopp. “We’re not in a position for a race. The only thing we can do is win football games. If that puts pressure on other teams, we don’t play them [apart from Tottenham].
“I want us to finish the season as good as possible, to take something out for next year. If that’s European competition great, if not we have to accept that as well. I want us to show our real face – the nice one, ugly one, nice one, ugly one is really tough. We’ve done it for three and a half games.
“Tonight I liked the first half the most for a long, long time. It’s always tough here. Tonight we controlled the game in a way we’d never done against West Ham and I really liked that.”
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