Andoni Iraola wishes Alexander Isak had done one thing differently in Liverpool defeat
Andoni Iraola is convinced that Liverpool would ‘100%’ have been awarded a penalty on Sunday if Alexander Isak had gone to ground after having his shirt pulled by Jurrien Timber.
The Reds’ head coach was left bewildered over that incident in the 21st minute of the Reds’ 1-0 defeat at home to Arsenal, for whom Kai Havertz had scored just five minutes earlier.
Neither Andy Madley nor the officials on VAR duty felt that a spot kick was warranted, a decision which was met with unified disagreement from Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright and Daniel Sturridge on Sky Sports.
Iraola will tell Isak to go to ground in future
Speaking to Sky Sports after the match, Iraola felt that the incident was a ‘clear penalty’ and believes that a foul would’ve been given had Isak gone down when Timber pulled his shirt.
The Liverpool boss said: “The fact that you are even asking me that he should have gone to the floor, that’s the thing. If he goes to the floor, they call the penalty for me. They call the penalty 100%.”
When the interviewer asked the Basque whether he’d tell Isak to go to ground if that happens again, he replied: “Yes, definitely.”
Isak shouldn’t have to do the officials’ job for them
We now have a farcical situation whereby Iraola feels compelled to openly advocate for his players to go to ground under contact from opponents because the officials on duty are failing in their task.
Quite frankly, Isak shouldn’t feel any obligation to engineer a penalty in such situations, seeing as the shirt tug from Timber was so blatantly obvious that there’s no justification for those on VAR not to intervene, whatever about the on-field referee missing it.
It’s the striker’s job to try and get on the end of the ball coming into the box (which he probably would’ve done if his jersey wasn’t pulled), not to seek the manufacturing of a spot kick because the officials can’t be trusted to do their job of calling such clear fouls.
That decision felt significant in the overall context of the match yesterday. Had the referee awarded the penalty as he should’ve done, Liverpool would’ve had a chance to quickly cancel out Havertz’s goal.
Had they done so, we can’t help but feel that it would’ve been a rather different game at Anfield. Obviously that’ll forever remain hypothetical, but there’s a real sense of what might’ve been had the officials not erred so badly over the incident involving Isak and Timber.
