One of these big decisions was against second place Liverpool – West Ham had come out of the blocks attacking well and had a solid defence, which unexpectedly stunned the Liverpool eleven. The first real chance for the visitors came when Adam Lallana played in the makeshift left-back, James Milner. The Englishman was a clear 3-5 yards offside and it was right in front of the linesman, who was more focused on the play than actually looking down his line. Liverpool subsequently scored and the game ended in a draw – a game West Ham should’ve won, ridiculed by abysmal officiating.
The penalty/diving discussion has been a rather big talking point in many Premier League games (and just football in general) as recently players have been diving when they want to gain either a free-kick or a penalty. These decisions can be quite controversial and Anderson’s *challenge* on Bernardo Silva is a prime example of this controversy. West Ham were drawing 0-0 with Manchester City when Anderson appeared to foul Bernardo inside the box – giving Man City a penalty and them winning the game from it. As we know football is a physical sport and there was uproar of sorts when this was given as a penalty as Anderson appeared to do nothing to warrant this penalty and it was seen by a lot as a fair challenge – more points cost by poor refereeing.
This last decision seemed to cause the most controversy in recent weeks; Anderson’s disallowed goal against Manchester United. We were dominating this game and when Chicharito headed the ball down from Masuaku’s cross, it fell to Anderson who acrobatically finished past De Gea. At first, the offside decision against the Brazilian appeared to be correct but after about 15 minutes of the decision circulating on social media, it turns out that Dalot’s foot was keeping Felipe onside. We ended up scoring in that match but it wasn’t enough to get us over the line to collect all three points.
