Rodri avoided conceding a penalty against Everton after VAR determined that the referee had not made a clear and obvious error in failing to give a handball.
Hearts were in Manchester City mouths as they sought to cling onto the 1-0 lead that Phil Foden had only recently given them when the ball struck Rodri on the arm in his own penalty area in the final 10 minutes of the match.
Paul Tierney did not think that the contact warranted a penalty for Frank Lampard's side, but the decision was looked at by the VAR team of Chris Kavanagh and his assistant Gary Beswick. In their view, they could not be certain that the ball had hit Rodri in the part of the arm that constituted handball as opposed to the top part of the arm that does not.
As a result, they could not deem that the referee had made a clear and obvious error and so the onfield decision stood.
City went on to grind out a 1-0 victory at Goodison Park that sees them move six points clear of Liverpool at the top of the table, having played a game more.
Foden's strike was enough to see them bounce back to winning ways after defeat to Tottenham and avoid them dropping points in consecutive Premier League games for the first time since December 2020, when Pep Guardiola was so unhappy with his team that he made drastic changes to their style of play.
