Phil Hay has blasted the farcical VAR situation that saw Leeds United awarded a penalty, only to then have it overruled.
Leeds, who’d already squandered one chance to equalise from the penalty spot earlier in the game, thought they’d been awarded another opportunity when Gabriel appeared to kick out at Patrick Bamford after an off-the-ball incident.
However, VAR got involved and overturned both the penalty decision and subsequent red card which was handed to the Arsenal defender, something that will have left a lot of fans confused and angered.
Hay has now ripped into VAR for this late decision while speaking on The Phil Hay Show.
(32:45) “Just to touch on something Leeds could do with, I think, a little bit of a break when it comes to VAR and refereeing decisions, would not be unhelpful.
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“I don’t think we’ve touched on yet the kind of shambles at the end of the game, the decision to award the penalty to Leeds to send off Gabriel, and then to reverse it award Arsenal a free kick and give Gabriel the yellow card instead.
“I think you can argue either way about whether Bamford’s nudge on him was reasonable grounds on which to overturn the penalty decision and I think some people will think that it was, I mean, it seemed to me that Gabriel knew what he was doing and was standing his ground to make sure that he was in Bamford’s way.”
TIF Thoughts on the late incident…
VAR did indeed come into play on Sunday to award Leeds a penalty, only for Bamford to get it completely wrong, but that appears to have been overlooked quite a lot given the scenes near the end of the game at Elland Road.
It’s true that Gabriel did indeed look at Bamford and step across him to block the striker from closing down Aaron Ramsdale, but the striker’s push wasn’t likely enough to send Gabriel down to the floor, which raises the questions as to why a free kick was finally awarded.
Gabriel wasn’t the only one to take things slightly over the top as Bamford went down very dramatically after seemingly only getting brushed by the Arsenal defender’s boot and still threw himself to the floor in pain, something that will have likely counted against him when VAR reviewed the footage.