Frank Lampard could be charged by the FA after they wrote to him asking to explain his comments about the officials in Everton’s Merseyside derby defeat, when he claimed Anthony Gordon would have been awarded a penalty had it been Mohamed Salah at the other end of the pitch.
The Everton manager may be accused of bringing the game into disrepute if the FA believe he breached rule E3 if he questioned the integrity of the officials “and/or implied bias.” Were Lampard found guilty, he would probably face a fine.
In a separate development, Everton had already contacted PGMOL to ask why a penalty was not awarded when winger Gordon was pushed over by Joel Matip, eight minutes before Andy Robertson opened the scoring in Liverpool’s 2-0 win.
The relegation-threatened club believe the second-half incident should have been looked at in more detail when referee Stuart Attwell, who had booked Gordon for diving in the first half, neither awarded the penalty nor gave the winger a second yellow card.
Neither decision was overturned but Everton are more aggrieved with the VAR, Darren England, who they feel dismissed the incident too rapidly and without checking it properly.
After the match, Lampard said he believed that Liverpool would have been awarded a penalty in similar circumstances.
“You don’t get them here,” he said. “If that was Mo Salah at the other end, he gets a penalty. I’m not trying to create conflict; it’s just the reality of football. It was a penalty. It was a clear foul.”
It added to Everton’s recent frustration with officiating. Referees’ chief Mike Riley apologised to Lampard when they were not given a penalty for a handball by Rodri in their 1-0 defeat to Manchester City. Once again, Everton were irritated more with the VAR, with Lampard calling Chris Kavanagh “a professional who cannot do his job right.”
They were also annoyed that midfielder Allan was sent off against Newcastle, with his yellow card upgraded to a red following a VAR review, and while they went on to win that game, their two appeals against his dismissal failed and the Brazilian had to serve a three-match suspension, meaning he sat out the defeats to West Ham and Burnley.
