Wayne Rooney dubs Newcastle United penalty denial 'one of the worst decisions' he's ever seen
We should all be celebrating the fact that Newcastle United will be in the hat for the FA Cup fifth round draw on Monday night after not only winning away from home, but doing it without Bruno Guimaraes. Instead, all we can talk about is the state of the officiating in the win over Aston Villa.
Let's take nothing away from Newcastle, who executed a fantastic game plan against Aston Villa, and didn't let their heads drop when the officials did everything they could to swing the result one way.
The lads plugged away and eventually got their reward thanks to goals from an inspired Sandro Tonali and Nick Woltemade.
However, all that goodness is overshadowed by the horrendous level of officiating by Premier League referee Chris Kavanagh and Stevie Wonder on the nearside touchline.
Wayne Rooney was disgusted by the decision to award Newcastle a free-kick rather than a penalty
There were plenty of incidents to chew on, including two penalty claims, a missed red card and the fact that there were three people offside for Aston Villa's opening goal, but the one that really irked former England hero Wayne Rooney was the decision to award Newcastle a free-kick instead of a penalty.
Rooney was on pundit duty for the BBC and he picked out that incident as the most offensive.
“That decision [Digne's handball] is one of the worst decisions I have ever seen in football because at no stage was Digne out of the penalty box.
“He is three or four yards inside. The linesman is just in front of it and you can clearly see how much he is in the penalty box.
“The referee looked like he blew and looked like he was listening to someone in his ear, so I'm assuming the linesman gave the decision, and it's an absolute shocker.”
Chris Kavanagh and David Blunkett need to be stood down by the FA
The fact that Newcastle ultimately won the game may save Chris Kavanagh, but had we lost, we can't imagine the fallout.
All referees can do about things like this is issue an apology, and that's not anywhere near enough to serve justice for decisions that were so, so bad.
Let's just hope the FA take action and Kavanagh and Ray Charles are sidelined for the foreseeable (pun intended) future.
