Referee Sam Barrott said no and, after some deliberation, he was backed up by the video assistant referee (VAR), Michael Salisbury. Fans might well say the Saliba challenge looked like more of a penalty. In the early days of VAR in the Premier League there were many soft penalties. Most memorable is probably the spot-kick given to Brighton when Liverpool's Andy Robertson kicked the boot of Danny Welbeck, who went down theatrically. The issue is that, as we saw with Fulham's spot-kick, if the referee had given the penalty to Everton the VAR would not have said it was wrong.

Source: BBC December 23, 2025 11:33 UTC