Chelsea left Turf Moor without punishment after a stoppage-time incident that left Burnley staff and supporters asking for clarification. At a Chelsea goal kick goalkeeper Robert S\u00e1nchez played the ball to Trevoh Chalobah. Chalobah bent down and stopped the ball with his hand before quickly rolling a pass back to S\u00e1nchez and turning to face Burnley players who were appealing.<\/p>\n
Referee Peter Bankes waved play on and the Premier League\u2019s official match centre provided no explanation of any VAR intervention by Rob Jones. Burnley manager Scott Parker said the moment initially passed him by. \u201cTo be honest, at the time I didn\u2019t even realise. I didn\u2019t even notice, so the ref or anyone else was not in communication,\u201d he shrugged, before adding, \u201cBut I have just seen it back and, I mean, it does look like a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parker expanded on his view of the sequence. \u201cThe ball\u2019s live,\u201d Parker insisted. \u201cThe keeper\u2019s rolled it. You could tell by his next action that the ball\u2019s live. So if you\u2019re really looking at the detail of it, [S\u00e1nchez] spots the ball, he plays it to the centre half [Chalobah] and then makes another angle, the ball\u2019s in play.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m not sitting here being critical, but I suppose that is why we\u2019ve got VAR. But I don\u2019t know whether it went to it, I don\u2019t know whether they looked at it. It\u2019s just one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sequence fits a pattern of similar contentious decisions over the last 18 months. Tyrone Mings was penalised for a comparable action in a Champions League tie against Club Brugge last season, a decision Unai Emery labelled \u201cthe biggest mistake I have witnessed in my career.\u201d By contrast, Arsenal were not punished for a similar touch by Gabriel in their Champions League quarterfinal against Bayern Munich in April 2024; referee Glenn Nyberg called it \u201ca kid\u2019s mistake\u201d while Thomas Tuchel raged against this \u201chuge mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s defensive reshuffle also drew attention. Beno\u00eet Badiashile, introduced at halftime for Reece James, used his body to keep Maxime Est\u00e8ve off the pitch at a corner while holding the post. The ball was not yet in play so no foul could be given. Badiashile was booked, and Parker questioned the speed of the referee\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Referee waved play on after Robert S\u00e1nchez’s pass to Trevoh Chalobah, sparking VAR questions. Debate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[795,190,172],"tags":[1129,1047,1215],"class_list":["post-4654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-burnley","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-benoit-badiashile","tag-champions-league","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4654","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=4654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}