A seething Marco Silva bemoaned the “unbelievable” VAR decisions that went against his Fulham side in Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Chelsea.
Fulham’s 18-year-old midfielder Josh King was denied a sensational maiden senior goal in the first half at Stamford Bridge after the VAR Michael Salisbury advised referee Rob Jones to take a look at the pitchside monitor.
The eventual decision was to rule out the goal due to a controversial call that Rodrigo Muniz had fouled Trevoh Chalobah in the build-up.
In the second half, Chelsea got a penalty to go 2-0 up as Ryan Sessegnon was ruled to have handled the ball from a Chalobah cross.
Though that was indeed a clear handball, Fulham argued that there were multiple moments in the build-up to the cross when they should have instead been awarded a free-kick.
Enzo Fernandez scored the penalty, which was awarded after a VAR review and the referee checking the pitchside monitor once more, adding to Joao Pedro’s opener for Chelsea, which came in the ninth minute of first-half stoppage time after a minimum of eight had been signalled.
“The second decision was completely unbelievable, for that penalty,” fumed Silva, who also bemoaned the officiating in last week’s draw with Manchester United.
“And it was an unbelievable decision [for the first]. You have many decisions to talk about. I have spoken about referees so many times. I am not in the best mood to do it.
“It’s handball from [Sessegnon] — definitely it’s handball. But before that moment, you can see easily two, three or four fouls for ourselves.
“There was a stamp on Alex Iwobi, handball by Joao Pedro, push on Joachim [Andersen]. They saw the penalty after three moments at least that they have to see for us.
“It’s the same VAR that found something unbelievable: a stamp from Rodrigo. The same people didn’t find a stamp on Alex Iwobi before the penalty. I can’t tell you anything more, but I don’t understand it.”
Silva added: “Fair enough, a difficult game for the referee. He refereed an intense derby like it should have been. He was very balanced. He took some good decisions. On the VAR, difficult to understand.”
Quizzed on whether he spoke with referee Jones after the match, Silva said: “I didn’t speak with him. I spoke with him at half-time to try to understand why the goal was disallowed, and why he didn’t disallow the goal at nine minutes [of added time].
“After the game, it was a moment just to thank our fans. I didn’t want to say something I will regret, because I want to be on the bench for the next game and my players need me there.”
