Gurgen It's arguable, if you want to use the loosest possible definition of arguable. There's more evidence that it wasn't handball than it was, and penalties are given for dives like that more often than not as despite there being not a great deal of contact and Paqueta making the most of it, Gabriel absolutely went bundling in and made contact.
People love to moan about refs, but the fact of the matter (which you acknowledge) is two of our most experienced players cocked up massively and yet again created a situation that got the home fans up and caused us to crumble.
The ref didn't throw away a two goal lead (twice in a week), the ref didn't do anything to influence our mentality, the ref didn't order Jesus to spend half the time needlessly rolling around the ground, the ref didn't make poorly timed and judged subs, the ref didn't miss our penalty, the ref didn't look hopeless and without a plan with minutes to go of stoppage time, the ref didn't stand pointlessly with the ball around the centre circle with thirty seconds go. And the ref won't have as big an impact in the coming games as some might think. The Brentford game is a particularly egregious example of poor refereeing this year, but as Brighton have shown we're not the only ones to have suffered from such poor refereeing. Most teams have these decisions go for and against them at some point, regardless of how persectured some of you may feel. By far the bigger influence as to how a game turns out is what we do, not the ref.
