Lampard disputes three decisions in Coventry’s Everton defeat

Everton beat Coventry 3-1 on Friday, according to BBC Sport. Thierno Barry scored twice and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall added a late winner after the hosts had trailed. Yann Gboho had given the visitors the lead early in the second half.

Coventry manager Frank Lampard said after the game that his side had been on the wrong end of three key decisions. Lampard, who previously managed Everton, argued that the match officials had got several calls wrong, and he questioned why referee Stuart Attwell did not award a penalty.

The hair-pulling incident

The main dispute centres on a moment when James Tarkowski pulled the hair of Caleb Yirenkyi while both players jumped for the ball. Attwell waved away Coventry’s appeals for a spot-kick.

Under rules relaxed at the start of this season, pulling hair does not automatically count as a foul or a red card. Officials also weigh the level of force and whether the act was intentional. Lampard said he still felt it was a foul, and he asked how the officials had defined a hair pull in the first place.

BBC Sport analysis said the law was softened after three players were sent off last season. For a penalty, the analysis noted, an act only needs to be a foul rather than violent conduct, which makes the Tarkowski incident harder to dismiss.

Other disputed moments

Lampard also pointed to a challenge by Vitalii Mykolenko on Taiwo Awoniyi, which he felt was a penalty. Replays appeared to show the contact came outside the box, and the video assistant referee cannot intervene to award a free-kick.

The biggest controversy came from Barry’s second goal. Lampard said he had seen an angle where the striker’s hand flicked the ball into the net. Video assistant referee Timothy Wood, however, decided there was not enough conclusive evidence of a handball offence.

BBC Sport analysis agreed that the goal raised a real question. It noted that the ball seemed to change direction after touching the hand, which may have been the reason it went in, although others might consider a ruling against the goal to be too fine a judgement.

Moyes responds and what it means

Everton manager David Moyes denied that Barry had handled the ball. He said Everton had also suffered decisions that went against them this season. Moyes added that he found the hair-pulling rule hard to accept and urged the authorities to fix it fully.

The result lifted Everton to fifth in the Premier League. Coventry remain 16th after the defeat. Lampard said he could not claim to know everything, and suggested that if only one or two of the calls had gone his way, the game would have looked very different.

BBC Sport’s analysis concluded that Coventry can feel aggrieved about two of the three decisions. The debate is likely to continue over how the relaxed hair-pulling law and the VAR threshold for handball are applied in future matches.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• BBC Sport: Lampard feels hair pull should have led to Coventry penalty

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