Manchester United beat Chelsea 2-1 today in the weekend’s Premier League headliner fixture, with a questionable call against Alvaro Morata generating much of the postgame buzz right now. Morata is actually a top trending term now for two main reasons.
One is the Chelsea goal disallowed due his being called offsides. The other is the Alvaro Morata versus Romelu Lukaku (and sometimes also versus Alexandre Lacazette) debate. By rule, if any body part that you can score with is offsides, then you by definition are offsides. Was the Spaniard over the line?
Does this confirm the need for VAR? Here are a few different angles, you can take a look at make up your mind for yourself.
https://twitter.com/TrollFootball/status/967796617104510976
The situation is very reminiscent of last weekend, when Juan Mata saw his goal in the FA Cup win at Huddersfield Town called off due to a VAR decision. Mata was in a similarly borderline, could go either way kind of position.
After the match, Chelsea boss Antonio Conte was obviously and understandably very upset about the call. The Italian wants to see an increased usage of VAR:
Antonio Conte wants an increased use of VAR after a late effort by Alvaro Morata was disallowed by the narrowest of offside decisions.https://t.co/kZB3qZpjbl
— SuperSport ? (@SuperSportTV) February 25, 2018
Moving on, today was a huge day for Lukaku has he finally scored against a side that’s in the top eight of the standings. It was also his first Premier League scoring strike in a match involving Chelsea. With Lukaku having a goal and an assist, he’s a hot topic right now, and with that comes the natural comparison to Morata.
After all, Alvaro Morata was the plan B for Chelsea once United hijacked Stamford Bridge’s plans to acquire the then Everton man. Morata has now gone 10 games without scoring, and that marks his longest run since 2015/16 for Juventus, where he actually had a 27 game goal scoring drought.
Looking at the three strikers bought by a trio of big six clubs this past summer, Lukaku has 22 goals on the season across all competitions, while Lacazette and Morata have 21 combined. Lacazette has since even been replaced, by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, in the winter transfer window.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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