Newcastle United were involved in Champions League action last night and rightly or wrongly, we ended up dropping two points in stoppage time. I have made my thoughts clear on the VAR robbery, but I'm sure that many Newcastle fans echo this belief that the wrong decision was made on the night.
The player who was penalised was our youngster Tino Livramento. Essentially, the full-back who had a great game handballed inside the penalty box but it was a massive deflection which caused the accident. It would help if officials cleared up what is a handball and what isn't, since there are conflicting definitions from the differing officiating bodies.
Low and behold, we shouldn't attribute Tino Livramento's performance to him giving away the penalty. Ultimately it wasn't his fault that the ball was deflected and hit his arm. As his own harshest critic, he will be gutted to give away the penalty late on but he shouldn't be - He should be proud, like we all are, for his performance throughout the game.
Danny Murphy compares Newcastle's Tino Livremento to Manchester United's Luke Shaw
This is echoed by pundit Danny Murphy who has paid the biggest compliment to Tino Livramento by claiming that in the England squad, only Luke Shaw is ahead of him for form at the moment. Quoted by TBR Football, Murphy echoed what we all think of Livramento.
"“Great one on one defender, good going forward, can play left or right-back. And we’ve got to get him in the England squad quick before he chooses Portugal. There’s only Luke Shaw ahead of him, for me, for form.”"Danny Murphy on Tino Livramento
Given Newcastle's injury crisis, we have relied a lot on Tino Livramento but what a player he's been for us. It seems to have taken him no time to adjust to Eddie Howe's philosophy, as he is consistently making menacing attacking runs and carrying out his defensive duties well. Keep going, Tino!