Tottenham fans were furious after Newcastle were awarded a penalty in their 2\u20132 draw at St James\u2019 Park, prompting the Premier League to explain the decision.<\/p>\n
Bruno Guimar\u00e3es opened the scoring for Newcastle in the 71st minute, but Cristian Romero quickly equalised. Ten minutes later, VAR advised referee Thomas Bramall to review an incident in the box after spotting a tussle between Rodrigo Bentancur and Dan Burn during a Newcastle corner.<\/p>\n
Although both players appeared to be holding each other as they fell, Bramall concluded that Bentancur had committed enough of a holding offence to justify a penalty \u2014 a call that stunned Spurs players and supporters.<\/p>\n
Premier League Explanation
\nOn their Match Centre on X, the Premier League stated that VAR\u2019s review led the referee to overturn his initial decision. The referee\u2019s announcement read: \u201cAfter review, Tottenham number 30 commits a holding offence at the back post and is not looking at the ball. My final decision is a penalty kick.\u201d<\/p>\n
The verdict sparked strong reactions. Jamie Carragher called it \u201charsh\u201d on Sky Sports, while Rio Ferdinand went as far as calling it \u201cdisgraceful\u201d in a social media post, criticising both the VAR officials and Bramall.<\/p>\n
Aftermath of the Decision
\nAnthony Gordon converted the penalty to restore Newcastle\u2019s lead, but Romero later grabbed his second goal with a looping bicycle-kick effort after Aaron Ramsdale\u2019s attempted punch. The match ended level, though Tottenham players felt aggrieved by what they viewed as an inconsistent application of the rules. Newcastle\u2019s Kevin Danso also commented that the decision seemed \u201ctough\u201d on Spurs, pointing to ongoing inconsistency around holding fouls during set pieces in the Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tottenham fans were furious after Newcastle were awarded a penalty in their 2\u20132 draw at St James\u2019 Park, prompting the Premier League to explain the decision. Bruno Guimar\u00e3es opened the scoring for Newcastle in the 71st minute, but Cristian Romero quickly equalised. Ten minutes later, VAR advised referee Thomas Bramall to review an incident in …<\/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-56058","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\/56058","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=56058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56059,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56058\/revisions\/56059"}],"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=56058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}