Everton were left incensed by the decision not to award them a penalty at West Ham United when Matheus Fernandes stretched out an arm and swatted the ball away with his hand when stood inside his own area, defending against Thierno Barry.
Many neutrals couldn’t believe it wasn’t given and even numerous observers of a Hammers persuasion admitted it was a blatant action, with the Hammers midfielder actually moving his arm toward the ball in an unnatural and anything but accidental position.
Sometimes in football, you’re trying to make a black or white ruling over numerous shades of grey, but if you were searching for an exemplar incident to what would be a ‘stonewall penalty for handball then this was it.
Short of Fernandes repeatedly dribbling the ball up and down on the London Stadium turf like an NBA superstar, it seems difficult to imagine what more he could have done. The fact that the Portuguese's own manager and compatriot Nuno Espirito Santo, when asked whether he thought it was a penalty, admitted he we was "scared", is about as close as you’re going to get from an opposition boss admitting his side got away with a big decision.
Yet, crucially the people who were making the call did not see it this way. The closest qualified person to the incident was on-field referee Stuart Attwell, who appeared to have placed himself in a good vantage point, but if does miss it, that’s where VAR should be stepping in, to eradicate the clear and obvious errors.
Otherwise, what is the point of deploying such a technology? Why didn’t the on-duty officials at Stockley Park, video assistant referee Michael Salisbury or assistant video assistant referee Daniel Robathan step in?
Personally, I have always had serious reservations about VAR and while in many ways I’ve come to resent the pedants’ paradise it’s become – you can only imagine how it might have stepped in to ruin the dramatic climax to the Rochdale versus York City National League title decider for promotion to the Football League earlier on the same day – but this has to be one of the instances in which it’s justifying its existence, or scrap it. Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle in the Premier League, even if the Championship have just rebuffed it.
So, Everton are set to step in, with chief executive Angus Kinnear ready to contact referees’ chiefs to raise concerns about the consistency of officiating in the Premier League.
This has been going on for years, though as, after a similar piece of expert ball-handling from a Blues opponent, Manchester City midfielder Rodri, at Goodison Park in 2022, the club’s then manager Frank Lampard and chairman Bill Kenwright both received phone calls from PGMOL boss Mike Riley after the club wrote to complain.
Actions speak louder than words, though, and only when the officials themselves start giving Everton a fair deal and treating them with the kind of respect they afford to others will there be a genuine breakthrough.
Because, all season long, the Blues have been hampered by repeated inconsistency when it comes to decisions.
Their campaign started at Leeds United – and with Chris Kavanagh, who incidentally was the VAR official for Rodri’s unpunished handball offence four years ago. At Elland Road, he awards the Yorkshiremen a late match-winning penalty for a supposed handball by James Tarkowski.
The Blues centre-back said: “I asked the question to the referee: ‘If my arm is by my side, is it a penalty?’, to which he said: ‘No’, so I don’t understand how it’s been given.”
James Tarkowski makes contact with the ball which subsequently leads to a penalty during the match between Leeds United and Everton at Elland Road on August 18, 2025
James Tarkowski makes contact with the ball which subsequently leads to a penalty during the match between Leeds United and Everton at Elland Road on August 18, 2025(Image: Peter Nicholls/Everton FC Official Photography Library/SmartFrame)
View Image
In Everton’s next game, their first competitive fixture at Hill Dickinson Stadium, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is punished for a similar offence by Attwell, the referee who missed the Fernandes handball this weekend. What is also galling, is that the Blues were not awarded a penalty at Burnley in December when Jaidon Anthony blocked a shot by Tyler Dibling in similar fashion.
Back in August, the Premier League Match Centre deemed Dewsbury-Hall had raised his arm and made his body unjustifiably bigger. Yet replays showed the Everton midfielder was closer to the shot than Anthony.
In the Blues’ previous game to the one at Turf Moor, there had been the failure to award them a penalty against Arsenal after William Saliba floored Barry. The Premier League Match Centre’s explanation merely remarked how the contact “wasn’t deemed sufficient for a penalt,” but just 48 hours later Fulham beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 thanks to a penalty converted by Raul Jimenez after an almost carbon copy challenge by Douglas Luiz on fellow Brazilian Kevin.
David Moyes claimed watching that incident left him “half choking” and added: “It feels like certain clubs seem to get those decisions and other clubs don’t – we seem to be on the latter side of that.”
Of course, adding insult to injury, the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents Panel subsequently voted that the decision not to award a penalty against Arsenal was incorrect and VAR should have also sent the match official to the monitor.
Just days later, after the turn of the year, Everton centre-back Michael Keane was shown a red card for a tug on the hair of Wolves striker Tolu Arokodare, and following the club’s unsuccessful appeal to have their centre-back three-match suspension overturned, furious manager Moyes, who insisted the action was not deliberate, claimed: “The technical part of it nearly makes it impossible to be done.”
After the incident, PGMOL chief Howard Webb talked tough when in conversation with Michael Owen on Sky Sports’ Premier League Match Officials Mic’d Up.
He said: “It (Keane’s sending off) was the appropriate outcome. It was unusual but if we see it again next week, it will be the same outcome next week as well.”
Except we didn’t. Because the following month in what was an even more blatant tug, Fulham’s Kenny Tete pulled the hair of Manchester City’s Antoine Semenyo, but he got off scot-free.
It’s begs the question that some people high up at the Premier League don’t like Everton. We’re all left scratching our heads why that might be.