The Chronicle’s Aaron Stokes has been speaking on the Everything is Black and White podcast about Alan Shearer’s comments regarding Eddie Howe’s reaction to Newcastle United’s disallowed goal at the weekend.
Newcastle have been right at the centre of VAR controversy over the last few days as Joe Willock was deemed to have fouled Vicente Guaita, despite replays clearly showing he was pushed into the goalkeeper by Tyrick Mitchell.
After the game, Howe was very dignified and didn’t kick up a fuss, merely stating that it was a perfectly good goal, holding himself back from singling out the referee or the VAR team – something that Newcastle legend Shearer didn’t agree with on Match of the Day, as he claimed that Howe took the decision ‘too well‘.
Stokes believes that Howe did the right thing by staying calm and shouldn’t have taken the decision any differently.
He said: “If I’m honest, I disagreed with Shearer when I heard that on Match of the Day, because as someone who’s sat in many Eddie Howe press conferences this season, I was fully expecting him to just say, look, it’s happened, let’s move on.
Did VAR get the Newcastle decision wrong?
Yes!
No!
“But actually, to his credit – fair enough, it wasn’t too strong, but he did come out and say that it’s a perfectly good goal chalked off. He even sort of accused the referee of changing his mind because of how long Vicente Guaita stayed on the ground, which, again, is very uncharacteristic of Howe to sort of put that blame on the ref and the player, so I didn’t actually think that Howe needed to do much more.”
TIF Thoughts on the disallowed goal…
It’s sensible from Howe to have kept on the right side of the line as venting his frustrations towards the officials would have gotten him nowhere apart from either a seat in the stands for the next game or having to pay a hefty fine.
Instead, the Magpies have launched an official complaint to the PGMOL about some of the decisions that haven’t gone their way this season, such as the apparent high boot from Callum Wilson which saw a goal disallowed, the shirt pull on Sean Longstaff against Wolves and the penalty which wasn’t awarded in their draw with Manchester City.
So it appears that Newcastle do indeed have a case for feeling hard done by this season, but realistically, nothing can be changed, what’s happened has happened and the Magpies just have to focus on getting points on the board, having won just once in the league all season.