Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville says he understands why VAR did not give a penalty to Chelsea after West Ham midfielder Tomas Soucek handled the ball in the box.

The Czech international was using his arms to support himself on the ground and Neville feels that may have been enough to stop the decision from being overturned:

“I can see how he’s leaned towards that way and ended up going down, he’s not sort of moved his arm towards the ball. I think always that it’s like with a handball or an elbow it’s when you see that [an arm flying out], if you see an arm go up and it’s a natural movement where you are just jumping for the ball it’s when they go like that [arm flinging out].”

“It’s when they moved the arm towards it. It felt to me like Soucek’s arm never moved. Now, he might be that clever that he can do that. But to me it felt like there was enough in it. I felt like it was probably a penalty but I feel like that one could have gone either way.”

Only Soucek will know whether he left his arm in the way to stop the ball, and that really is the crux of the matter. While Neville ultimately says that he would have given the penalty initially, doubts over whether there was a deliberate handball led to no action being taken by the officials.

A defeat would have been extremely harsh on the Hammers anyway. David Moyes’ side did start the game slowly and deserved to go 1-0 down but, after equalising against the run of play, they were the team pressing for the winner in the second half.