Should Manchester City have been given another penalty after Lloris saved Gundogan’s shot?

Hugo Lloris saving spot-kicks from Manchester City players is not something new.

The Frenchman has saved penalties from Sergio Aguero a couple of times before which was the reason why the Argentine legend was not entirely confident about taking another shot against the Frenchman.

Aguero instead let Ilkay Gundogan take the shot, when the Sky-Blues were awarded a penalty for Serge Aurier’s foul on the former in the first half.

The result wasn’t any different as Lloris anticipated the direction of Gundogan’s shot to perfection and dived exactly in the right direction to stop the shot.

The real drama, however, unfolded after that. While Lloris stopped the spot-kick, he couldn’t make a clear save and the ball went towards his left hand side on the rebound.

Raheem Sterling, who was outside the box at the time the spot kick was taken, responded very, very quickly as he saw the shot was saved and tried to reach the ball.

Lloris also left his position and moved towards the ball to collect it after the penalty shot rebounded. There was a slight collision between Sterling and Lloris inside the penalty box. As Sterling hit the ground, the Manchester City players demanded another penalty.

The referee, however, didn’t award another penalty to City. Instead, he booked a couple of players for showing dissent.

Should another penalty have been awarded to City?

Another penalty could have been awarded to City only if the referee was sure that Lloris committed a foul on Sterling, but it wasn't exactly a foul.

While Sterling was on his way of reaching the ball, he knew that the keeper would reach the ball round about the same time as him. So, he was looking for was some sort of contact from the keeper so that could hit the ground and could appeal for a foul.

From the keeper’s point of view, he had a genuine chance of reaching the ball. As he went close to the ball and saw Sterling coming, he dived and tried to collect the ball before the Englishman could reach it.

Beforethe keeper could touch the ball, however, Sterling kicked the ball and fell down just as his feet touched the extended hand of Lloris.

It could have been a foul only if Lloris had no chance of reaching the ball and he had stretched his hand only to bring Sterling down, which he didn’t. He had a genuine chance of reaching the ball.

Since Lloris didn’t commit any foul on Sterling, another penalty shouldn’t have been given to City, but City should actually have been allowed to re-take the first penalty itself and there was a different reason behind it.

At the instance of the first penalty, Lloris should have been exactly on the goal-line when the ball left Gundogan’s feet.

But, the television replays showed later that the Spurs keeper was ahead of his goal-line when the shot was taken and hence, was in a wrong position to save the shot.

It was probably up to the linesman to pick it and convey to the referee straightaway that the penalty was wrongly saved and should be re-taken.

While the referee made the correct call with regard to the Sterling-Lloris situation, Manchester City would feel hard done by, the way the overall situation turned out because they deserved another go with the spot-kick.

Featured Image Credits: thesun.co.uk