Presenter Richard Keys has been discussing referee Kevin Friend and some news that has emerged about him regarding a decision he made during a Liverpool game.
News has emerged recently to confirm that Friend will be dropped from the next round of games in the Premier League after a rather controversial incident from Liverpool’s recent clash against Crystal Palace.
The incident itself happened late in the game when Diogo Jota went down in the area and despite there being contact, referee Friend waved play on and awarded a goal kick to the home side.
However, VAR official Craig Pawson then instructed Friend to check his decision again on the monitor, and a penalty was subsequently awarded, even though it could be argued that Jota was the one that initiated the contact on Palace goalkeeper Vicente Guaita.
Taking to Twitter to discuss the matter, Keys branded the decision to punish Friend rather than Pawson as ‘madness’ and claimed that this would lead to no referees making a decision themselves and instead relying on the technology:
TIF Thoughts on Richard Keys’ comments on Kevin Friend after the Liverpool incident…
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Liverpool can certainly consider themselves lucky when it comes to this decision, because it’s obvious that Jota was the one that initiated the contact in a manner that isn’t too dissimilar to that of Jamie Vardy, who gained something of a reputation for the way he won penalties.
You just have to hope that a moment like that doesn’t end up having a big impact on the title race further down the line, or there could be significant uproar over it, because it’s clear by the actions that the Premier League has taken that they feel like there was some form of mistake being made.
It’s just rather unfortunate that Friend has found himself punished over what was an honest mistake, but hopefully it won’t have that big of an impact between now and the end of the season.
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I’m a Liverpool fan and I don’t know of any of us who thought it was a pen. But it didn’t change the result anyway. But not just Vardy does it. Kane is the absolute worst. He gets away with murder because he’s the England captain.