Gary Lineker reacts to West Ham United controversy v Chelsea after MOTD footage
Gary Lineker has reacted to the incident which saw West Ham United denied a penalty against Chelsea during Saturday’s defeat.
Crysencio Summerville – given a starting berth by Julen Lopetegui – appeared to be pulled down inside the Chelsea area by Wesley Fofana 28 minutes into the clash but referee Samuel Barrott waved away the appeals as the Hammers suffered a 3-0 loss at the London Stadium.
Lopetegui has so far still won just one of his opening five Premier League matches.
Lineker, speaking on BBC’s Match of the Day [21 September, 23:31] said: “I think there’s a tendency with the referees’ call thing where there’s a very high bar.
“The problem is, people start to complain and then the bar will drop. It’s an impossible system the way they do it, and until there is an appeal system with VAR, it will always, always be a problem.”
West Ham frustrated by refereeing call
It’s a tricky balancing act in terms of lowering said bar that Lineker mentions, and awarding outright penalties – and as replays showed, Summerville was being held by Fofana for at least two seconds by his wrist.
Maybe Barrott was swayed against the Hammers by the way the Dutchman went down, but the upshot is he was fouled and it would have been given anywhere else on the pitch, particularly to a player in a defensive action.
This incident occurred just before the half-hour mark in East London with the Irons trailing to Nicolas Jackson’s double – a successful spot-kick would have halved the deficit to 2-1 and potentially made proceedings entirely different.
As it turned out, the visitors strolled to victory and left Lopetegui tearing his hair out once more as he further experiments with his side.
There appears to be an increasing number of debatable incidents for penalties swept under the carpet at this moment in time, and while we are consigned to VAR sticking around for the long haul, an appeal system would certainly offer the help the officials clearly require.
In other West Ham news, a decision from Tim Steidten which is coming back to bite the club.
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