Following his side’s 2-2 draw against Everton, Ange Postecoglou has stated that he is not a fan of the fact that referees are allowing more and more decisions to go to VAR rather than intervening and making a call.
As one would have expected, Tottenham faced a challenging afternoon at Goodison Park, with the home side making it difficult for the Lilywhites with their physicality and carrying a major threat on set-pieces.
Both of Everton’s goals came from set-piece situations, with Guglielmo Vicario having a difficult outing as Sean Dyche’s men put bodies around the Tottenham number one to make it hard for him to come out of his line.
While Spurs were perhaps a little lucky to go into the interval 2-1 up courtesy of Richarlison‘s brace, they gave a much better account of themselves in the second period and looked like they had done enough to emerge with all three points.
However, the Merseyside club found their equaliser in the 94th minute, with Postecoglou ruing the fact that his side did not have enough time to respond.
Postecoglou makes referee claim after Everton draw
The Tottenham boss also identified that referees are more hesitant to make certain decisions these days and were happy to pass on the responsibility to VAR, admitting that he is not a fan of the trend.
Postecoglou said (via BBC Sport): “It’s obviously never going to be an easy game here. You have to deal with a fair bit but most of the time we handled it OK.
“In the second half, we had good chances and we needed the third goal to kill the game off. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hold out.
“It seems like referees just let things go nowadays and let VAR decide. We’re disappointed to concede so late.
“It seems like there’s a trend with us that referees aren’t prepared to intervene in those kind of situations, we have to accept that.
“The nature of it, conceding so late, doesn’t give us the chance to wrestle it back. We just have to accept that.”
Spurs Web Opinion
While Postecoglou’s point about the referees is valid, I thought we could have been a little more street-smart in the way we closed out the game in the dying stages. We kept making unforced errors in possession and kept giving needless fouls away and we were punished late on.