6 Things We Learned From Everton's Draw With Newcastle United

4. Referees & Their Assistants Still Get Things Badly Wrong

By rights, Everton should have won the game 4-2, thanks to that goal-line mishap that unfairly missed a perfectly good goal from Victor Anichebe, and a bad offside decision that ruled out an earlier Marouane Fellaini effort that also should have stood. Those two incidences will be the two that draw the most attention and the most controversy, considering the manner of the result, but they were far from the only things the refereeing team got wrong last night. In a game that ended up being almost as bad-tempered as the corresponding fixture last season, Everton were called up for 18 fouls, and Newcastle 13, and some should have been punished more strongly than they were. Marouane Fellaini and Vurnon Anita escaped red cards for tackles that went over the ball and could justifiably have been considered stamps by the current reading of the rules of the game: had someone more notorious like Paul Scholes or Joey Barton committed either of the tackles - especially Fellaini's on Mike Williamson - it isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to say they would probably have walked. There is also a strong case for the free-kick which led to the Anichebe phantom goal to having been awarded unfairly, especially considering some of the robust challenges from both sides that went unpunished. But the worst decision of the game for Newcastle United was the moment almost immediately after Anichebe's goal was wrongly not given when Steven Pienaar committed a professional foul on Hatem Ben Arfa as the Frenchman raced clear with two team-mates, and only a single man to beat. By the letter of the law, Pienaar was not the last man, and so shouldn't have been sent off on those grounds, but the cynical manner of his foul could well have been seen by another referee as worthy of a red card. But that wasn't the worst of it, as far as Newcastle fans were considered, since Ben Arfa stayed on his feet and would have been in a position to build a strong attack, only to see the referee call play back for the Pienaar foul. Whatever happened to playing advantages? In short, it was a poor performance all round by the referee and at least one of his assistants.
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