Burnley manager Scott Parker was one of many inside Turf Moor who was left bemused by the referee’s decision to overlook a penalty appeal against Chelsea on Saturday lunchtime.
The visitors ultimately emerged with a 2–0 victory in a match which was not quite as straightforward as the scoreline may suggest. The game was still goalless when a large contingent of Burnley players feverishly demanded a penalty in the 28th minute.
At a goal kick for Chelsea, visiting goalkeeper Robert Sánchez kicked the ball to Trevoh Chalobah, who bent down and stopped it with his hand. The Blues centre back quickly rolled a pass back to his keeper before turning to face the throng of appealing claret shirts.
Referee Peter Bankes waved play on and there was no word from the Premier League’s official match centre as to the ruling of VAR Rob Jones.
Parker admitted that the incident initially passed him by. “To be honest, at the time I didn’t even realise. I didn’t even notice, so the ref or anyone else was not in communication,” he shrugged, before adding, “But I have just seen it back and, I mean, it does look like a penalty.”
“The ball’s live,” Parker insisted. “The keeper’s rolled it. You could tell by his next action that the ball’s live. So if you’re really looking at the detail of it, [Sánchez] spots the ball, he plays it to the centre half [Chalobah] and then makes another angle, the ball’s in play.
“But I’m not sitting here being critical, but I suppose that is why we’ve got VAR. But I don’t know whether it went to it, I don’t know whether they looked at it. It’s just one of those things.”
It is one those things which has occurred with an odd frequency over the last 18 months. Aston Villa’s Tyrone Mings was notably penalised for this very offence during a Champions League tie against Club Brugge last season which his manager Unai Emery labelled “the biggest mistake I have witnessed in my career.”
Arsenal, however, escaped this fate during their Champions League quarterfinal against Bayern Munich in April 2024. Gabriel was the guilty party on that occasion yet referee Glenn Nyberg brushed aside what he called “a kid’s mistake.” Thomas Tuchel, then in charge of Bayern, raged against this “huge mistake.”
