Tottenham supporters were left furious after Newcastle were awarded a penalty during the 2-2 draw at St James\u2019 Park, and the Premier League has now explained the reasoning behind the decision.<\/p>\n
Bruno Guimaraes put Newcastle ahead in the 71st minute, but Cristian Romero quickly pulled Spurs level. Around ten minutes later, VAR advised referee Thomas Bramall to check the pitchside monitor after spotting Rodrigo Bentancur and Dan Burn grappling during a Newcastle corner.<\/p>\n
Although both players appeared to be holding onto each other before falling to the ground, the referee judged Bentancur\u2019s contact to be enough to award a penalty, a call that stunned both Tottenham players and fans.<\/p>\n
Premier League Explains the Penalty Call
\nThe Premier League later detailed the decision on their Match Centre account on X, confirming that VAR prompted the referee to overturn the original non-penalty ruling.<\/p>\n
Their statement read: \u201cAfter review, Tottenham\u2019s number 30 commits a holding offence at the back post and is clearly not focused on the ball. The final decision is a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Bramall deciding the incident met the threshold for a spot kick, many were baffled. Jamie Carragher called it \u201charsh\u201d on Sky Sports commentary, while Rio Ferdinand went even further on social media, branding the decision \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and criticising both the VAR official and the referee.<\/p>\n
Newcastle\u2019s Anthony Gordon converted the penalty to restore the home side\u2019s lead late on, but Romero struck again shortly after, hooking an improvised bicycle-kick effort into the net after Aaron Ramsdale failed to deal cleanly with a corner.<\/p>\n
Neither team could find a winner in the closing minutes, though Spurs may feel aggrieved by the controversial call. Speaking post-match, Kevin Danso admitted the decision felt \u201ctough\u201d on Tottenham, pointing to the ongoing inconsistency in how referees judge holding during set pieces.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating,\u201d he said. \u201cSome weeks it\u2019s given, some weeks it\u2019s not. All we can do is stay focused and keep performing the way we did today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham supporters were left furious after Newcastle were awarded a penalty during the 2-2 draw at St James\u2019 Park, and the Premier League has now explained the reasoning behind the decision. Bruno Guimaraes put Newcastle ahead in the 71st minute, but Cristian Romero quickly pulled Spurs level. Around ten minutes later, VAR advised referee Thomas …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":56041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/mixcollage-02-dec-2025-10-38-pm-9635-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56046,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56045\/revisions\/56046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}