Graham Potter takes Tomas Soucek swipe as VAR controversially denies Chelsea penalty

West Ham 1-1 Chelsea: Former Blues defender Emerson Palmeri cancelled out Joao Felix’s opener at the London Stadium before the visitors saw protests for a late penalty turned down

West Ham United v Chelsea in pictures

Graham Potter took a sarcastic swipe at the ‘good save’ from Tomas Soucek that denied Chelsea a late penalty.

But the Blues boss refused to condemn referee Craig Pawson and VAR Neil Swarbrick for failing to spot the handball from Conor Gallagher ’s shot. A decision which led to condemnation of Potter himself from BT Sport pundits Joe Cole and Rio Ferdinand.

“It was a good save,” Potter griped. “You need your goalkeeper sometimes to give you the points. It looks like one of those that if it was given it wouldn’t have been overturned but obviously it wasn’t given.”

Potter isn’t one to go ballistic in public but Cole knows diplomacy isn’t always the answer and that sometimes a manager needs to turn the air blue, as predecessors such as Jose Mourinho and Thomas Tuchel would have done.

He said: “He’s doing a fantastic job, but if he had someone in his staff who has maybe been at that level, managed at that level, you need to cause a bit of an uproar because it does two things: it takes the deflection from the bad elements of your performance and it also puts it on VAR.

“Let these Chelsea fans leave the stadium feeling hard done by instead of thinking ‘Why didn’t we beat West Ham? We’ve signed all these players’. It changes the narrative of the story.”

Ferdinand added: “Mourinho would have been at it in that presser today and it would have been the story of tomorrow. The back page would have been, ‘Mourinho slams VAR’, and it takes the gloss off what happened on the pitch.”

Potter will never pretend to be someone he isn’t and comparisons with previous Chelsea managers are perhaps unfair. But Cole and Ferdinand had a point that it would do him no harm to come out fighting sometimes, and it’s something Potter will maybe reflect on.

Chelsea boss Graham Potter refused to be too vocal about the penalty decision vs West Ham

Few people would have begrudged him a bit of luck with the decision given the torrid time he has been having. But Potter added: “You have to earn your luck, we can’t complain or wait for luck to turn for us, we have to keep working.

“The first half we were positive, we started the game well, we scored a good goal, had more opportunities, had good attacking intent. We conceded, which we could do better with, and that changes the dynamic of the game but overall the first half was quite positive.

“The second half was more reflective of where we are as a team — players coming up to speed, returning from injury and players adapting to the Premier League. That’s the work in progress, that’s what we have to work with.”

For 20-odd minutes Chelsea — and Joao Felix in particular — were scintillating and so overwhelmed were West Ham by the speed with which they were moving the ball around that the home fans must have feared a rugby score.

Chelsea saw appeals waved away, despite replays showing Tomas Soucek blocked the ball with his hand(BT Sport)

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Felix’s side-foot volley from Enzo Fernandez’s dinked ball over the top was a lovely goal, and both Felix and Kai Havertz had the ball in the back of the net but both efforts were marginally offside.

West Ham also lost Lucas Paqueta in that time but credit to them for closing the gaps Chelsea were finding and they took advantage of a dreadful collective decision from the visitors to try to play the ball out from the back.

Vladimir Coufal picked it up, his cross was met with a flick from Jarrod Bowen and there was former Chelsea left-back Emerson Palmieri arriving at the far post to stick it home.

What had been a good game until that point almost instantaneously ran out of steam and West Ham, who lost Nayef Aguerd to injury as well, went closest to snatching a win but Declan Rice, playing with a virus, was adjudged to have been offside in the move before Soucek scored.

Moyes said: “For 20 minutes we found it difficult but we improved. We stayed in it and earned a good point in the end.”

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