Tim Sherwood furious over penalty controversy as Leeds United lose v Newcastle United
Tim Sherwood and Jeff Stelling were absolutely baffled when Newcastle United were not awarded a second-half penalty at Leeds United on Saturday.
Although the Magpies won 1-0 at Elland Road, Sherwood and Stelling felt as though they should have also had a penalty kick when Allan Saint-Maximin was brought down in the box by Robin Koch.
Despite there being contact, referee Chris Kavanagh and VAR Kevin Friend decided against awarded a spot-kick, much to the bemusement of Sherwood.
Speaking on Sky Sports News on Saturday [22 January, 04:44pm], Sherwood said: “I think [Newcastle] should have had a penalty.
“Saint-Maximin goes in, he’s one-v-one, he’s attacking, he decides to cut back onto his right foot, the defender (Koch) misses the ball and hits his foot. He just drags it and makes contact in the penalty area.
“For me, that’s a penalty.
“Chris Kavanagh doesn’t give the penalty. Obviously, VAR looked at it and check complete, no penalty in their opinion.
“If he would have given it on-field, they certainly wouldn’t have overturned it.
Stelling also couldn’t hide his disbelief and said: “We could all see it was a penalty. We could all see there was contact.
“Goodness knows what the VAR was looking at there, it’s Kevin Friend.”
Lucky
If you watch the replay, there’s no doubt that Koch caught Saint-Maximin.
Newcastle’s star forward did seem to make the most of the contact a bit and he probably could have stayed on his feet.
But referees these days weirdly seem to require that players go to the ground in order to award a foul in their favour.
Saint-Maximin is a real handful and Koch is still trying to get back up to full speed after a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
He’s not the slowest or most cumbersome defender – but he’s nowhere near as agile or as quick as Saint-Maximin.
It was a penalty, let’s be honest.
We’re biased in favour of Leeds, as are all Leeds fans. But even we admit we got away with one there.
Either way, it didn’t matter and we lost 1-0.
Patrick Bamford’s new injury issue and our lack of goalscorers is becoming more and more of a worry.
Maybe we need a new centre-forward before 31 January.
In other Leeds United news, Phil Hay reacted after Victor Orta was caught on camera by a fan amid reported talks for a major signing.