Fans made their voices heard online last night and this morning over the lack of any meaningful analysis of the Newcastle United and West Ham United match on Saturday night's Match of the Day.
Newcastle were awarded a controversial penalty in the second half which changed the tide of the game and depending on your point of view, it could be argued whether the penalty should have stood or not.
It took a VAR check and an on-field review by the referee to eventually award the penalty after Kalvin Phillips kicked through Anthony Gordon's leg.
However, questions could be asked about the award. Such as: was it more of a foul from Gordon on Phillips, or what else was Phillips supposed to do?
It probably was the right decision, but the fact that Everton had a very similar incident waved away in their game against Bournemouth shows how contentious the decision was.
Match of the Day, however, chose to not even mention it in their analysis which left fans, and TalkSPORT host Jeff Stelling baffled with Stelling taking to X to question the decision.
"Interesting that MotD decided the second Newcastle pen was not worth discussing despite it being prob the most controversial decision of the weekend. Not the fault btw of Alex Scott just (a) terrible production decision."
Former Newcastle striker, Alan Shearer, a Match of the Day pundit himself, wasn't about to take that criticism lying down. Not only sticking up for his beloved Newcastle in pointing out that it was the correct decision but also defending his colleagues by pointing out the limited time the show has to cover the games.
"Morning Jeff. My guess is they didn’t show it because it was a certain penalty and as you know time is limited on the show! Hope all well"
The timing issue is a fair point, but in that case, why analyse Newcastle's defending after the Jamaal Lascelles injury which was clear to anyone watching what had happened, and ignore the biggest talking point of the game? we stand with Jeff Stelling on this one. Very poor by the MotD team.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
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23 | 35 | 56 |
2 |
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24 | 27 | 50 |
3 |
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24 | 13 | 47 |
4 |
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24 | 16 | 43 |
5 |
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24 | 13 | 41 |
6 |
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24 | 13 | 41 |
7 |
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24 | 13 | 40 |
8 |
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24 | -3 | 37 |
9 |
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24 | 4 | 36 |
10 |
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24 | -3 | 34 |
11 |
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24 | 0 | 31 |
12 |
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24 | -2 | 30 |
13 |
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24 | -6 | 29 |
14 |
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24 | 11 | 27 |
15 |
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24 | -17 | 27 |
16 |
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23 | -5 | 26 |
17 |
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24 | -18 | 19 |
18 |
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24 | -28 | 17 |
19 |
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24 | -27 | 16 |
20 |
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24 | -36 | 9 |