LONDON (Reuters) – Fulham manager Marco Silva felt West Ham United’s last two goals in Sunday’s 3-1 defeat should not have stood as Gianluca Scamacca and Michail Antonio were guilty of handballs.
Scamacca appeared to lightly brush his hand against the ball before he chipped the goalkeeper to give West Ham a 2-1 lead and did not celebrate as he looked worryingly at the linesman, but the goal was allowed to stand after a lengthy VAR check.
In added time, substitute Antonio handled the ball before he profited from a defensive mix-up to score West Ham’s third but it was not caught by referee Chris Kavanagh.
“I will not speak about the referee, sorry, because they will probably come after me and I’ll be off the bench or pay a fine. I am not here for that, I am here to manage my players,” Silva told the BBC.
“I will not say to you what I think. Can I ask you what you think? Even for the third goal there was a handball about five seconds before. Congratulations to West Ham, they got the three points.
“Until the penalty we were clearly the best team on the pitch. West Ham have a lot of quality and come from two really good seasons but Fulham were clearly the best team on the pitch.”
Andreas Pereira had opened the scoring for Fulham in the fifth minute but the midfielder conceded a penalty later in the first half that galvanised West Ham to mount a comeback.
“We showed personality, character and we like to control the game on the pitch and the penalty changed the balance of the match. We lost some focus and confidence after the penalty,” Silva added.
“The game showed that we have to keep learning and improving. I will keep demanding more from my players and more maturity to manage periods of the game better.”
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris)
