Soft Penalty? It Was A Penalty All The Same

Last updated : 06 February 2018 By Footy Mad - Editor

Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson thought his side's performance after half-time deserved a maximum points haul.

He said: "The way we were playing in the first half I would certainly have taken (a point). After watching the second half and watching us dominate the game as we did, I feel we were unlucky not to have got all three points in the end because our second half performance merited that.

"It's a point that doesn't help either of us enormously but we've just got to make sure that when we can't win, we draw."

Newcastle manager Rafael Benitez questioned the decision to award Palace a penalty, with Ciaran Clark penalised for pulling Christian Benteke's shirt.

The Spaniard said: "We conceded a soft penalty because he was pushing my player and my player was pulling. We cannot do it (shirt pulling) but I can see a lot of penalties not given."

"We then changed everything because obviously they had more confidence and they were pushing, we knew that they have very good players up front. We needed to be strong in defence and it was difficult."