Ex-FIFA referee Mark Halsey disagrees with Allan’s red card in Everton v Newcastle
There were two key moments in last night’s 1-0 win for Everton, one was Alex Iwobi’s goal, the other was Allan’s controversial red card.
The Brazilian was originally branded a yellow card for his challenge on Allan Saint-Maximin in the final 10 minutes of the 90 and it looked like Craig Pawson had made a great decision.
VAR had other ideas however and Stuart Atwell twisted Pawson’s arm into changing his decision to red upon review and former FIFA official Mark Halsey doesn’t agree with the final outcome.
“Craig Pawson was in a fantastic position. He was right there and as soon as the challenge went in, he cautioned the player for a reckless challenge,” Halsey said in Caught Offside.
“Looking at it, I thought ‘yeah, that’s right’, but you’ve got to ask yourself ‘is that, or was that a clear and obvious error by Pawson?’
“When you’re looking at that and Attwell is looking at it so long, he took a long time to make up his mind – a long time.
“So that told me that it was not a clear and obvious error. If you’re looking at an incident so many times, you’ll get out of it whatever you want to get out of it. So I think Attwell has re-refereed that.”
Where is your backbone, Pawson?
When will VAR ever not be the biggest talking point of a Premier League game at the moment?
Referees now have lost confidence in their own decision-making and it is creating even more incorrect decisions than before, which is the exact opposite of what it should have done.
Pawson was advised to go and look at the screen at the side of the pitch but as soon as he does that, the assumption is that he will change his decision even if he was right in the first place.
We are crying out for a referee to stand up to the person manning VAR and say “No, I stand by my decision having reviewed the footage.”
If the referee is going to change every decision he makes through VAR, is there any point in having the person in the middle at all anymore?
In other Everton news, Jamie O’Hara and Jason Cundy reacted to last night’s dramatic victory on talkSPORT radio.
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