Gabriel Magalhaes, was tripped by Neal Maupay and believes that his team ought to have been granted a penalty for the play, but it has since been clarified why they weren’t.
An afternoon on Merseyside that the Gunners would rather forget happened as Mikel Arteta’s team went on to suffer only their second loss in the league this season. At the hour mark, a header by James Tarkowski off a corner by Dwight McNeil was all that was needed to put a gap between the two teams and put a damage in Arsenal’s chances of winning the title.
Everton thoroughly deserved their victory, as Sean Dyche was successful in coaching his team to execute an amazing pressing scheme that neutralized the attacking threat posed by Arsenal. The previous manager of Burnley deserves a lot of credit for being able to implement such a system in what was only his first game in charge of the Everton team at Goodison Park.
On the other hand, things might have turned out differently if Arsenal had been awarded a penalty not long after Everton scored the game’s first goal. It appeared as if Gabriel had been tripped by Maupay on his way into the box, which in turn caused the Brazilian center back to collide into Idrissa Gueye. The referee did not see the collision.
Everton was awarded a free kick as a result of the response from the referee, David Coote, which sparked additional protests from the players for Arsenal.
However, while all of this was going on, the VAR were really considering the event during a potential penalty check; however, they stood by Coote’s decision to make the call on the field.
Veteran Premier League referee Peter Walton provided an explanation as to why Arsenal were not awarded a penalty despite the fact that certain Gunners fans may feel particularly wronged by the decision.
He stated: “Well, actually the Arsenal player initiated the contact, so I don’t think this will be granted as a penalty kick; clearly there was enough contact there, but not a penalty kick.”
The way Walton’s comments read make it appear as if he is of the notion that Gabriel was the one who instigated the contact with Maupay, despite the fact that the defender and everyone linked with Arsenal are highly unlikely to regard it in that light.
The Gunners can consider themselves unlucky about the events that led up to Everton’s goal because the corner kick from which the Toffees scored immediately was incorrectly granted. This allowed Everton to score directly from the kick.
Although the linesman wrongly ruled that Ben White was responsible for the final touch, television replays demonstrated that it was actually Alex Iwobi who was responsible for the touch.
Following the loss, Arteta chose not to criticize his team’s performance and instead stated, “Today I love them much better than I did the week before or the month prior. It is simple to be next to someone when they are doing well.”