Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has bemoaned the new handball rule which led to Everton’s winning penalty against his side on Saturday afternoon. Richarlison bagged his side’s second goal in a 2-1 win over the Eagles at Selhurst Park, giving the Blues the lead once more after a Cheikhou Kouyate header had cancelled out Dominic Calvert-Lewin#s early opener. However, there was some controversy surrounding how the penalty was awarded to Carlo Ancelotti’s side after Lucas Digne’s headed ball forwards struck the arm of Joel Ward.
Roy Hodgson said “I just don’t understand how we’ve allowed it to happen. I don’t understand how the Premier League, the referees, the coaches, the managers, the players – I don’t know how we’ve allowed this type of situation which we have virtually every match to occur. The rules of football are important. One of the beauties of the rules of football is that basically everyone knew them because they’d played some form of football if only in just the schoolyard. But now we’ve got to take on board rules which are being suggested are the right ones to judge handball, and for me they aren’t the right ones to judge handball. I think the whole thing is a nonsense. I’m always disappointed that a good game of football between two good teams, which probably should have finished as a draw, now means one team one team goes away with three points and the other with zero. And of course the winner leaves knowing full well it shouldn’t have been a penalty, and the loser goes away thinking we’d played well enough but this sort of penalty has robbed us of any points in the game. I criticised that (Victor Lindelof incident last week), if you remember correctly, last week, I don’t think this was a penalty, in the game I watched before kick off when Maupay was adjudged to have handballed it, I don’t think that was a penalty. I think the rule is a nonsense. It’s a nonsense when we get one, and it’s a nonsense when there’s one against us. It’s probably only serving the purpose of you guys [the media] basically because of discussions and dramatic moments are what keep your work in full swing. But for us in football I just find it very, very disappointing that the game that I certainly love and believe in is being reduced to this level where every week games are being decided on so-called penalty decisions for handball which are definitely not handball. Unfortunately instead of the quality of football today from the two teams, which I thought was very good and worthy of two teams that have started the season so well, all of the discussion is going to be about handball or not. Probably, I’m going to find myself in the spotlight for what I think is an obvious truth – that the rule is wrong and I don’t understand how we in football have allowed it to develop.”
