Referee Chris Kavanagh’s failure to award Newcastle a clear penalty during their FA Cup win over Aston Villa on Saturday night has drawn attention.
Alan Shearer was furious with officials (Image: BBC)
Manager Alan Shearer has slammed those involved for not awarding Newcastle an obvious penalty in their FA Cup fourth round tie against Aston Villa. Newcastle booked their place in the fifth round with a 3-1 win over 10-man Villa on Saturday night, but the post-match discussion was dominated by other topics.
The Magpies took the lead in the 63rd minute with Sandro Tonali’s first of two goals at Villa Park, but only after he should have been awarded a spot-kick. Villa left-back Lucas Digne apparently handled the ball inside the area as he tried to squeeze in a cross, but referee Chris Kavanagh inexplicably awarded a free-kick on the edge of the box.
Video assistant referees only appear in the FA Cup after the fifth round, meaning Kavanagh’s mistakes cannot be corrected. Newcastle eventually scored from the second phase of a free-kick and continued their comfortable win, helped by Marco Bizzotto’s red card, but club legend Shearer was still fuming in the BBC studios.
“There’s probably a bit of an excuse why the referee didn’t see this and I’m trying to be nice to him, but there’s no excuse for his assistant Nick Greenhalgh who’s 10 or 15 yards away and today was an absolute nightmare,” he began.
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“He took an offside free-kick (Tammy Abraham’s first Villa goal) and was 15 yards out. So well! If you want proof of the damage VAR has done to referees, I think today is a good example of that because they didn’t have a comfort blanket and today they look scared to make decisions.”
“And that’s the damage it’s done to the referees. For me, it actually makes the situation worse, because I don’t think it’s a difficult decision at all. In fact, it’s easy and you have to judge on this basis. There’s no excuse for an assistant not to tell the referee that his decision is completely wrong.”
Lucas Digne’s handball was firmly in the box (Image: BBC)
Wayne Rooney then suggested that it was Greenhalgh who was the worst.
“I think you can criticize the officials and you can praise them, but that decision was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in football, because at no stage did Digne leave the penalty area,” he said.
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Referee Chris Kavanagh made a terrible mistake (Image: Molly Darlington/Getty Images)
“I think he’s three or four yards inside the penalty box. The linesman is right in front of us and you can clearly see how far he is in the box. To not make that call…the referee blew it and it looked like he was talking to someone in his ear. I think the linesman made that call, which is really shocking.”
Former Villa striker Dion Dublin added: “For Digne to jump on the ball and be in the box during that jump, it’s a bit…I don’t know. He’ll be embarrassed to see that and everyone involved will know they made a mistake. It doesn’t matter now, because Newcastle got the result, but it’s awful.”
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