Gary Neville reveals whether he thinks Spurs deserved a penalty for Kulusevski foul

Gary Neville insisted that Michael Oliver made the right decision not to award a penalty for Tottenham in the lead-up to Bukayo Saka’s goal in the first half.

Tottenham had the better of the early exchanges of the game but it was the away side who opened the scoring against the run of play, with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg heading the ball into his own net on 15 minutes.

However, Spurs did not let their heads drop after conceding that goal and continued to play some good football, committing bodies forward.

They were a little unlucky not to draw level, having Micky van de Ven’s goal chopped off for offside while also striking the woodwork.

The decisive moment of the game came in the 27th minute as Dejan Kulusevski appeared to be clipped and lost his footing inside the box before James Maddison also tumbled to the floor.

Did Spurs deserve another penalty against Arsenal?

Oliver waved away both penalty shouts and in a blink of an eye, Arsenal went up the other end and scored, with Bukayo Saka going past Ben Davies and slotting the ball into the far corner.

The Tottenham players and fans were fuming at the decision not to hand Kulusevski a penalty but Neville believes the correct conclusion was reached.

The former Man Utd man said on Sky Sports (via The Mirror): “The Tottenham fans are furious but there weren’t penalties for me at the other end.” However, the pundit did describe the penalty that Tottenham eventually got in the second half for Declan Rice’s foul on Ben Davies as a “stonewall”.

Spurs Web Opinion

There was not a lot of evidence that the trip on Kulusevsli was intentional and I would have been fuming if that penalty had been given against Tottenham.

However, one of our players should have perhaps committed a tactical foul and picked up a yellow card as soon as we lost the ball, given the number of bodies we had committed forward at that point.

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