It was one of the most bizarre and confusion referring decisions of the Premier League season as Anthony Taylor blew his whistle to deny Liverpool what could have been a key goal in their title race late on West Ham.
With the scores locked at 2-2, a cross came into the box and West Ham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola fell to the ground as he collected the ball. He took his time to get up but Taylor waved played on and didn’t whistle for a foul.
Areola then rolled the ball out in front of him in the box and Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo reacted as he was about to kick the ball into an empty net. But then Taylor whistled.
What is the explanation for the decision?
There have been suggestions that Anthony Taylor had played advantage as he was going to give a foul on Areola but since the West Ham goalkeeper had the ball, he allowed him to play on and not give a free kick.
Does that clear things up? A little. But not really.
There was no real clear gesture from Taylor to play advantage, which is usually the two hands put straight out in front of him to show all of the other players on the pitch that advantage is being played. Instead there is just a gesture which looks like he’s saying to get on with the game rather than showing he would have given a free kick for the small amount of contact on Areola s he went down. Of course, Taylor could have shouted to play advantage too. We don’t know if that happened.
But still, this was very confusing and all very similar to the Arsenal vs Bayern Munich incident recently where Bayern believed a goal kick had already been taken when Gabriel then handled the ball in the box to put it down to take the goal kick. Bayern thought the ball was already live and, by the letter of the law, a penalty kick should have been given to them for handball.
There will certainly be a push for the audio of this incident to be released to understand exactly what happened, as it seems like Areola has got away with a potential huge mistake which would have surely led to Liverpool going 3-2 up late on and their title hopes being a little rosier than with the draw they left east London with.