Alan Shearer was raging at 'terrible decision' that almost cost Newcastle United point at Bournemouth
While the game at the Vitality Stadium between AFC Bournemouth and Newcastle United on Sunday was anything but a 'classic', it seems, on reflection, that there were a few contentious incidents.
A goal was ruled out for offside for Bournemouth in the first half, and a penalty was missed for Newcastle in the second, Malick Thiaw avoiding a red card by the skin of his teeth, and a controversial last-minute free-kick that could have seen all three points staying on the south coast.
After the game on Sunday, and full of an epic Sunday roast, sleep was all I could think about. I returned home to write my match report, and I couldn't remember any noteworthy incidents. The only stat I'd really made a note of was that it took until 91 minutes before a shot on target was registered by either side in the second half. That was the calibre of game we'd just witnessed.
Today, though, with a bit of coffee in the system and the help of a few other reports online, there were some things to discuss. We've tackled the failure to award the penalty when Nick Woltemade pulled back in the area, but Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker took more of an issue with a referee's decision late in the game.
Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker thought the decision to award Bournemouth a free-kick was 'ludicrous'
The aforementioned first shot on target in the second half came from a Justin Kluivert free-kick, which The Rest Is Football hosts believe never was. Harvey Barnes was penalised for handball after the ball struck his arm from close range.
Shearer: “I was thinking, come on, give me a bit of excitement. A good result at Bournemouth, but it was a pretty drab and dire game, wasn’t it? It was awful.”
Lineker: “It wasn’t great. I thought, actually, the first half an hour was all right. It was quite end-to-end, and it had quite a good pace to it. And then it just kind of petered out to nothing. Do you know what I was thinking? Alan’s going to do this podcast in a minute. Bournemouth are going to score. You know, right near the end, they got a free kick on the edge of the box.”
Shearer: “Terrible decision, the handball?”
Lineker: “The handball. It was ludicrous, wasn’t it? And they wouldn’t have been able to turn it over because it was not a penalty. It was just outside. And I was thinking, Alan’s going to go absolutely ballistic if this goes in. I mean, he blasted it at him from about a yard. He had his hands by his side. It was just ludicrous.”
Shearer: “I would have told you where to go if that had gone in and we had have been beaten 1-0. I just wouldn’t have come on.”
5-4-1 isn't going to get us the goals we so desperately need
I'll admit that I missed the awarding of that free-kick entirely. I was fighting off a satisfying food coma by that point, so I just saw them putting the ball down and setting up.
It was a superb hit by Kluivert and an equally good save by Nick Pope, but knowing that it was a free-kick that shouldn't even have been given only adds to the depressing stat of that being the first shot on target of the second-half.
Newcastle United need to find a way to get Nick Woltemade into the game more and create some chances. First, though, they need to abandon this 5-4-1 set-up. I'm all for trying something new, but that wasn't it.
