Dermot Gallagher believes that Tottenham shouldn’t have been awarded a penalty in the north London derby against Arsenal.
Talking on Ref Watch on Sky Sports (Sky Sports News, Mon, 11.30am) he agreed that it was a foul on Kane but said that as the Tottenham striker was in an offside position when he was moving to challenge for the ball, the goal should have been disallowed.
“First of all, a great spot by the referee for the penalty, it was definitely a foul,” Gallagher said.
“The problem occurs at the outset as the assistant isn’t in the right position and he’s always playing catch-up.
“He doesn’t see Kane challenge for the ball and he doesn’t see that he was offside. The minute he challenges for the ball he’s active and he should have been flagged offside.”
However, Gallagher also claimed that Arsenal shouldn’t have been awarded a penalty either, towards the end.
Saying that, once the penalty had been awarded and missed, Gallagher claims it should have been retaken as Jan Vertonghen had encroached into the area, and ended up clearing the ball from the line.
OPINION
VAR will be here next season, which might do Dermot Gallagher out of a job on Ref Watch, but it’s long overdue. Tottenham got the best of the bad decisions on Saturday after they scored the penalty that was wrongly awarded to secure a point at Wembley. Arsenal missed theirs but might also consider themselves unlucky after Vertonghen was almost close enough to tackle Aubameyang as the Arsenal striker prepared to take the penalty. How the officials missed that is anyone’s guess but the upshot is that Tottenham stopped a slump that was threatening to derail their season. In other decisions from the game, Gallagher believes that the referee was right to give Lucas Torreira a red card, although he says he felt sorry for him as “he had nowhere to go” and that Davinson Sanchez didn’t stamp on Laurent Koscielny. If any game was built for VAR it was this one.