Frank Lampard's Frustration Over VAR Decisions in Everton's Defeat
Frank Lampard left Goodison Park shaking his head, not just at a 3-1 defeat, but at a night when every big call seemed to lean Everton’s way.
Thierno Barry’s brace and a late strike from Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall dragged the hosts back from a goal down to move David Moyes’ side up to fifth. Yann Gboho had fired Coventry in front after the interval, a reward for a disciplined away display that briefly had the home crowd on edge.
Then the controversy started to pile up.
The hair pull that lit the fuse
The first flashpoint came long before the goals. James Tarkowski rose with Caleb Yirenkyi, his hand clearly in the Coventry forward’s hair. Yirenkyi went down, Coventry appealed, and Stuart Attwell waved play on. No penalty. No VAR intervention.
The laws on hair pulling were softened this season. Not every tug means a red card. Officials now weigh up force and intent before sending a player off. But Lampard’s issue was more basic: if it’s a pull, why isn’t it at least a foul in the box?
“They're saying it's not enough of a pull and I think it's a hard area to be in. What is a hair pull? You've decided it is but it's not enough,” he said afterwards. “I think the rules are fine. It's not a red card… but I think if the rule remains that it's a foul so I felt it was a foul.”
On another night, with another referee or another VAR, Coventry might well have had a spot-kick. Instead, the game rolled on and the sense of injustice began to simmer.
Edges of the box, edges of patience
If the Tarkowski incident annoyed Lampard, the second major call pushed him closer to boiling point.
Early in the second half, with Coventry growing in belief, Taiwo Awoniyi drove at Vitalii Mykolenko. The defender clipped him right on the line of the penalty area. Lampard was adamant: “Taiwo for me on the line of the box is a penalty. You've got to give the foul in real time anyway, the ref did let it go, and I felt it was a penalty.”
Replays from the camera in line with the box suggested the contact started just outside. That detail saved Everton from a VAR-awarded penalty. Because the foul was judged to be outside the area and Attwell had not given a free-kick, the video officials stayed out of it.
Another tight call. Another one that didn’t fall Coventry’s way.
Barry’s touch, Barry’s double
Then came the moment that will replay in Lampard’s mind all weekend.
Barry, already on the scoresheet, struck again with a finish that turned the match decisively towards Everton. Only this time, the ball appeared to brush his arm before it crossed the line. Coventry players surrounded the referee, VAR Timothy Wood checked the footage, and the goal stood.
Lampard did not hide his frustration.
“The Barry one is handball, I've heard they are saying it didn't touch his hand but I've seen an angle where he has flicked it in with the final touch. VAR is there for that,” he said.
The VAR team decided there was no conclusive proof of handball. No clear, undeniable angle. Without that, the on-field decision – goal – remained. Yet the ball’s change of direction after the apparent contact will fuel arguments that this one should have been ruled out, just as Nottingham Forest saw a similar effort chalked off against Tottenham earlier in the season.
This time, the benefit of the doubt went to the attacker.
Moyes backs Barry, questions the rulebook
On the opposite bench, Moyes saw the same incidents through a very different lens.
“We've had plenty [of decisions] which have gone against us. It certainly doesn't hit his hand,” he insisted, defending Barry. The Everton manager did, however, share Lampard’s unease over the hair-pull law.
“The hair pull rule has changed so it would be a booking if it was but I still think it's ridiculous that rule is in the game. I can't understand why they don't fix this completely because I don't see it as a good rule at all.”
So while he celebrated a comeback win and a climb to fifth, even Moyes accepted that part of the modern rulebook feels muddled.
Aggrieved and adrift
By the final whistle, the pattern was stark: three big VAR talking points, and Coventry on the wrong side of at least two of them.
They leave Goodison in 16th, nursing a sense that the night could have unfolded very differently with a whistle here, a replay there. Lampard did not claim to be infallible – “I can't sit here and say I know everything and they should give all three of them” – but he knew exactly what those calls meant.
“If one or two of them don't go our way, but they would clearly change the game.”
On the evidence of this bruising evening, Coventry are fighting not just opponents and league position, but the thin margins of interpretation that now shape Premier League football.
