Alan Shearer delivers verdict on Salah penalty incident in West Ham defeat v Liverpool
Alan Shearer feels West Ham were hard-done-by in their 2-1 defeat at Liverpool on Sunday as he doesn’t believe the home side should have been awarded a penalty.
Pablo Fornals put the Irons into an early lead before Arthur Masuaku was adjudged to have fouled Mohamed Salah in the penalty area.
Salah stepped up to score the resulting spot-kick before Diogo Jota wrapped up all three points for the reigning Premier League champions late on in the second half.
Newcastle legend Shearer has suggested that there wasn’t enough contact on Salah for referee Kevin Friend to award a penaltyl
“West Ham were really comfortable and I thought it was really harsh on them, to be honest,” Shearer said on BBC One’s Match of the Day on Saturday night.
“I know he makes contact but that contact clearly doesn’t cause him to fall because he then plants his foot, Salah, and falls to the floor.
“It’s not supposed to be if you make contact, whether it’s a foul or not, and I don’t think that was enough to be a penalty.”
Let’s face it. Salah made a meal of that.
While there was contact between Masuaku and the Egypt international, there was nowhere near enough for him to hit the ground the way he did.
And just because there is contact and a player goes down, doesn’t mean it’s a foul.
You can forgive Friend for awarding the penalty because of where he was stood in relation to the challenge.
But there’s no way that the man behind VAR can look at that challenge and say that it’s a foul.
West Ham were so unlucky to walk away from Anfield empty-handed on Saturday but the end of that match marked the end of a very tough set of fixtures.
In other West Ham news, Michail Antonio wants to spend the rest of his career at the London Stadium.