Richard Keys and Andy Gray give verdict on controversial West Ham United goal v Arsenal as new footage shared
Richard Keys and Andy Gray have shared new footage of the controversial goal that Tomas Soucek scored for West Ham in their win at Arsenal.
Soucek fired West Ham into the lead at Emirates Stadium after 13 minutes and Dinos Mavropanos added a second early in the second half of Thursday’s (28 December) contest.
However, the manner of the Hammers’ opener dominated all the talk after the game as there was confusion as to whether it should have stood.
The ball looked to be out of play to the naked eye before Jarrod Bowen spotted Soucek, but there now appears to be proof that was not the case.
Speaking on beIN Sports, as shared on Twitter [30 December], Keys and Gray agreed that they both felt the ball was out of play.
However, after the footage showed a small amount of the ball was still in play, Keys added: “We can now definitively give you the answer, which will make one of these two teams a little more comfortable.
“That much of the ball was in. So Arsenal can feel a little bit better about what happened, and West Ham will be delighted – they’re in the clear.”
Move on
This was one of those freak goals – albeit it has now happened twice in the past couple of months in the Premier League – that leads to debate raging.
Watching the game in real time, it looked for all the world that the ball was out of play. However, it can often be deceiving due to the positioning of the cameras inside the ground.
So that has proved, with this evidence from beIN Sports (if you can really call it that) justifying the decision made on the day by the officials.
Bowen deserves praise for refusing to give up on it, while Soucek was brilliantly positioned to blast the ball past David Raya.
It helped the Hammers on their way to a famous win at Emirates Stadium, and there can now be no debate over whether it was a deserved win or not.
In other West Ham news, a journalist has been left “baffled” by the latest goings on at London Stadium.