Dermot Gallagher doesn’t think Brentford’s second penalty should have been given

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Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher can’t believe Newcastle United were punished with a second penalty after a lengthy VAR check on Saturday.

There was absolutely no doubting the first penalty awarded to Brentford after Sven Botman barreled into Kevin Schade inside the box. Ivan Toney stepped up and placed a tame effort towards the bottom-right corner and Nick Pope was able to get down and gather the ball comfortably. That was Toney’s first penalty miss in five years.

Toney was able to exact his revenge later on in the first half when Chris Kavanagh, with the ‘help’ of VAR awarded another spot kick to the hosts after a lengthy VAR check and Kavanagh viewing the incident on the pitch-side monitors. Alexander Isak was adjudged to have impeded Rico Henry and Newcastle were punished.

Dermot Gallagher was shocked that the penalty was awarded

However, speaking on Sky Sports’ Ref Watch section today, former referee Dermot Gallagher has condemned the decision saying: “It’s not a foul.

“I was really surprised that this went to VAR, how many times he looked at it and I still thought that when the referee went to the screen he’d decide to stick with his decision, which was goal kick.”

VAR is costing teams vital points in the Premier League this season

So it wasn’t just our biased black and white eyes, then, because I could not for the life of me see what the officials had seen. Isak had no idea Henry was coming, he didn’t look at him, he made a genuine attempt to clear the ball and his foot wasn’t even that high – certainly not compared to the head kicks Newcastle players suffered recently which went unpunished.

It was a bad weekend for VAR with the Tottenham v Brighton game littered with dodgy decisions, to the point where Brighton have received an apology from the PGMOL. Although quite how that’s meant to make up for the three points they lost as a result of those poor calls I don’t know.

I don’t want to go on another rant about VAR, I did that on Saturday, but it’s kind of comforting in a way to see that Dermot Gallagher agrees with the Newcastle fans on this one. I imagine we’d be a lot less calm had the result not gone our way, so PGMOL can think themselves lucky on that one.