Roberto De Zerbi accepted the VAR reversal that affected Tottenham a day earlier but warned refereeing in Monday\u2019s match felt unsettled. Spurs were held 1\u20131 by Leeds United as De Zerbi\u2019s side failed to capitalise on a critical opportunity in a game described as physical and frenetic.<\/p>\n
De Zerbi said he had no issue with the overturn of Chris Kavanagh\u2019s on-field call and suggested the events surrounding the previous day\u2019s VAR drama may have affected officiating. He singled out the match referee Jarred Gillett, calling the game rushed and the officials lacking calm. \u201cThe first minute until the end of the game, the referee went to me, \u2018if you go out, yellow card,\u2019 and I think they were not calm today,\u201d he said. The manager was booked late for entering the field after an earlier warning for leaving his technical area.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe they suffered the pressure of the West Ham-Arsenal game and VAR. For sure, we suffered the pressure for the speed of the ball, for the order on the pitch and we didn\u2019t play with patience.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrenetic and we were rushed, but also the referee was not calm,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
On the high-profile VAR incident itself De Zerbi was unequivocal. \u201cI can\u2019t understand the polemic because it was a foul, 200%, not 100%, if you want to talk about football.\u201d He declined to enter wider debate over decisions that went against Spurs in the match, including Mathys Tel\u2019s penalty concession and a penalty not given after Lukas Nmecha\u2019s challenge on James Maddison. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to come inside the polemic. I didn\u2019t see. I didn\u2019t watch again. I don\u2019t know.” <\/p>\n
The draw leaves Tottenham on 38 points with a goal difference of minus nine and two fixtures remaining: Chelsea (A) and Everton (H). West Ham sit on 36 points with a minus 20 goal difference; a win at Newcastle would temporarily move them out of the relegation zone. Opta\u2019s relegation likelihood for Tottenham was noted at 19.54%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
De Zerbi backs VAR reversal after Spurs drew 1-1 with Leeds; they are two points clear As it stands<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,187],"tags":[1505,1162,1553],"class_list":["post-13769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-epl","category-tottenham-hotspur","tag-accountability","tag-analytics","tag-bookings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}