Premier League: Crystal Palace 1-2 Everton - Hodgson blames ‘nonsense’ rule as Everton penalty sinks Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace 1-2 Everton. Photo: Everton

Briefly and improbably, Everton are top of the Premier League. They got there not by clerical error or through a sudden and unexplained vaporisation of all the teams beginning with letters from A to D, but by winning their third game in a row: a greasy, hard-fought, relentlessly entertaining arm wrestle at a drenched and freezing Selhurst Park.

They were the better team, the more ambitious team, the more attractive team, and yet they still largely owed their win to the butterfly wings of VAR: Richarlison’s first-half penalty being awarded for a painfully harsh handball against Joel Ward.

“A nonsense ruining the game of football,” was how Roy Hodgson haughtily described the decision, a messy interpretation of a botched handball rule to which some are clearly adapting quicker than others.

Carlo Ancelotti did not agree with the new rule either but he did not seem overly perturbed. In any case, he was preoccupied not just by Everton’s third league win but a third way of winning. TheGuardian