Chelsea\u2019s first-half visit to Sunderland produced a major refereeing flashpoint after a penalty appeal was turned down and then left untouched by VAR.<\/p>\n
The key moment arrived about a quarter of the way through the opening half, when Palmer shifted beyond Luke O’Nien. Sunderland\u2019s skipper tried to stop him, but he did not get near the ball and instead came into the back of Palmer\u2019s right knee.<\/p>\n
Referee Gillett did not signal for a foul, and video assistant referee Nick Hopton also chose not to ask for a review at the monitor. During the contest, the Premier League issued a statement saying the VAR was not convinced by the penalty appeal.<\/p>\n
Hopton\u2019s view was that the incident happened outside the area. Broadcast footage, however, suggested the contact may have started just before the white line and then continued into the box, which would have made a penalty decision more likely.<\/p>\n
The reasoning behind the call sits in the way VAR is allowed to operate. It can only intervene when there is a \u201cclear and obvious error,\u201d a standard maintained by the Premier League\u2019s lawmakers.<\/p>\n
That still left many online fans angry at the outcome, especially after Sunderland were awarded a penalty just 13 minutes later. Sky Sports commentator Chris Sutton offered only partial sympathy for the visitors, adding to the scrutiny on a decision that had already become the main talking point of the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea\u2019s penalty appeal was rejected at Sunderland after VAR judged the challenge outside the box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,689],"tags":[1836,59],"class_list":["post-22304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-sunderland","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22304","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=22304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}