VAR was once again one of the main talking points as Everton and Tottenham Hotspur shared the spoils on Sunday.
Alan Shearer and Ian Wright were left fuming with the on-field and VAR decision-making during Everton’s 1-1 draw with Tottenham at Goodison Park on Sunday.
The former strikers think that Everton should have been awarded two penalties against Tottenham, as Wright labelled Richarlison as an ‘annoying’ player for going down too easily, though he did feel he should have been awarded a spot-kick when Davinson Sanchez challenged him late on in the game.
Whilst there were a number of VAR talking points, the other incident which caused controversy was Dele Alli’s handball in the penalty area, whilst he was trying to head the ball away from danger.
After the game, both Shearer and Wright were left ‘baffled’ by what is going on with VAR, as they feel that Everton were hard done by against Spurs.
On Alli handball: “Absolutely, they should have had a penalty,” said Shearer, as posted by RT Production. “The laws of the game clearly state ‘hand above your shoulder in an unnatural position’, and it clearly hits his hand, I know he’s being challenged… but that for me says everything in the law that should be an offence.” – Wright then added: “I’m totally with that, I thought it was a penalty.”
Richarlison penalty shouts: “Again, I feel, he [Richarlison] he’s quite annoying to watch because he goes down for everything. I think in that instant, he’s done enough for me to get something from the defender,” Wright added. “For me, that’s a penalty and Everton have been hard done by, again.”
Shearer added: “I thought that was a penalty. Even more baffling is that we are trying to find consistency and Martin Atkinson was the VAR referee, who gave the Deulofeu one [against Chelsea]. I didn’t think that was a penalty yesterday, at all!”
In the end, the biggest and most worrying talking point was the horror injury suffered by midfielder Andre Gomes in the second-half.
It came after he was involved in a challenge with Heung-Min Son and Serge Aurier, with the Spurs attacker, sent off for he incident, though there are those who feel that it was the wrong decision to send him off.
Both sets of players, including Son himself, were visibly upset with what happened, as Everton picked themselves up and equalised through Cenk Tosun late on in stoppage-time.
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