Lampard not expecting any punishment for his Kavanagh comments

Often we see managers sugarcoat their real feelings during their post-match comments especially when commenting on refereeing. However, after Everton were clearly robbed of a penalty on Saturday against Manchester City, the new manager at Goodison did not hold back on what he said to the media about the astoundingly bad decision made by VAR Chris Kavanagh.

As fans we had all expected Lampard to receive censure from either the Premier League or the Football Association with some sort of fine upcoming. However it appears there will be no action taken against the manager following the personal apology yesterday from head of refereeing Mike Riley to the club, with phone calls from him to the club chairman Bill Kenwright and to Lampard as well.

Speaking during his pre-match press conference ahead of tomorrow’s FA Cup Fifth Round clash against Boreham Wood, Lampard indicated that the authorities had taken into consideration how egregious the missed call by VAR was even as the manager himself took a more conciliatory tone than on Saturday.

“I haven’t been told anything about being reported for my comments after. I think I was pretty straight, when you’re commenting on such a clear incident, I don’t think I’ve heard anything from anybody in the game saying that it was absolutely a clear penalty

“The apology from the referee’s side showed that it was a mistake for whatever reason. There’s not much more to say now, because you can’t change anything. I don’t want to say anything and be the manager who keeps banging on about it weeks after the event. The only thing I hope is now that there’s been a few for Everton even before I got here — even with the benefit of VAR — the human element has gone against us. I hope that can change, I’m not asking for anything, it’s just when such a clear one goes against you it brings up in your mind, and hopefully in the future those ones do not go against you when you deserve to [get them].”

When asked if he was given any reassurances or explanations on how the mistake was made on Saturday, Lampard added -

“It has just been explained to me as an absolute mistake, but it hasn’t been broken down to me. That’s the reason why a lot of us managers and probably fans and people in football would love to hear the conversations between the on-pitch referees and VAR - not every conversation, but probably some of these critical ones just to see the method on how they got to the result which was a non-penalty, that’s quite hard to get your head around.

“I don’t want to hold all referees or Mike Riley to account on it. Mistakes can happen and this one was very clear and I struggle to understand how and why it happened, but I can’t ask for any more than we’ve got.

“We don’t get the point back which is critical for us with the position we’re in, on that front we move on. We hope we don’t have to suffer too many more of these decisions, particularly that clear that go against us.”