PGMOL director Mike Riley made personal phone calls to both Bill Kenwright and Frank Lampard to apologize for not awarding them a penalty against Manchester City. Despite the ball clearly striking the arm of Rodri, Paul Tierney and Chris Kavanagh dismissed Everton’s penalty claims. The club made official complaints to the Premier League after which they received personal calls from Mike Riley for the incident.
“There is no doubt, there is no probably to it,” Chelsea manager Frank Lampard said before receiving an apology from Mike Riley. “The decision is incredible, incredible, and that loses us the opportunity to get what we deserved. That’s a VAR call. That’s Chris Kavanagh, I spoke to the referee and they know it is a penalty, the question is that is it offside and it wasn’t. That’s the reason we have VAR. It wouldn’t have needed more than five seconds to know it was a penalty. He [Kavanagh] should have either told the referee to give it or told him to go look at it.”
“We’ve lost a point because of a professional who cannot do his job right. You start searching for whys and I can’t think why. It is so incompetent to get it wrong,” he added. “Pep [Guardiola] will know, Everton fans will know, Man City fans will know, it was the clearest penalty you could give: the arm is out – great, below the sleeve – great, I was waiting for the penalty. Incompetence at best, at worst who knows? I’ll wait for the statement or apology they do when things are wrong but it will mean nothing.”
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