Richard Keys and Andy Gray react live to controversy in Everton win v Crystal Palace as footage drops
Richard Keys and Andy Gray have questioned whether the penalty scored by Crystal Palace winger Eberechi Eze against Everton should have been allowed to stand.
Eze equalised for Palace with a fifth-minute pen that he had himself won, shortly after Vitaliy Mykolenko had opened the scoring at Selhurst Park.
The Palace ace used his trademark stuttered run-up for the spot-kick and wrong-footied Jordan Pickford, but Keys and Gray spotted that he briefly stopped before connecting with the ball.
Watching the footage back on beIN Sports’ live coverage of Saturday’s (11 November, 15:49) Premier League action, Keys said: “Do you think that was all one movement?”
Gray replied with, “no, I thought he stopped,” to which Keys added: “So did I”.
Moot point
If Eze did indeed stop prior to taking the penalty, he would be breaching Law 14 of IFAB’s Laws of the Game, which states that a player cannot illegally feint.
In fairness, nobody inside Selhurst Park appeared to notice, with the bigger topic of debate being whether or not Jarrad Branthwaite even fouled Eze in the first place.
Had Everton not held on for the three points, this may have been a topic to explore in a little more detail. However, thanks to Idrissa Gueye’s later winner, it is now a moot point.
The contest at Selhurst Park had talking points aplenty, this penalty decision – and the subsequent converting of it – being just one of them.
Full credit must got to the Everton players for keeping their focus amid all the madness and finding a winner late on to keep this impressive run of form going.
In other Everton news, one Toffees player had a 3/10 shocker at Selhurst Park.