At the London Stadium on Sunday afternoon, West Ham United will welcome Crystal Palace in the Premier League.
Boss Roy Hodgson of Crystal Palace will be eager for his team to end their current run of only one victory and four losses in their previous five league games, while David Moyes of West Ham will be frantic for his team to win three straight Premier League matches.
With a victory, the Hammers, who presently occupy tenth place in the standings, would be competitive contenders for a top six finish this year.
Although West Ham’s performance has been fairly up and down this season, a win this coming Saturday would indicate some significant advancement.
We should be defeating the South London team for no reason at all, especially considering that Eberechi Eze and Cheick Doucoure will be sidelined by injuries.
But we have one major issue that we will be dealing with this weekend.
Bad news ahead of West Ham vs Crystal Palace Premier League clash
The official Premier League website has stated that Peter Bankes will serve as the senior VAR officer for our match against Palace this week.
We are very sorry to hear that.
In addition to his extensive tenure with the Hammers, Peter Bankes most recently managed one of our games during our 2-2 draw with Newcastle last month. If Bankes had even performed at a somewhat respectable level, the outcome may have been drastically different.
When Jarrod Bowen was tripped by Bruno Guimaraes during a transition, Bankes declined to give him a second yellow card. He also neglected to file a complaint against Jamaal Lascelles for pushing Lucas Paqueta in the head.
Afterwards, the 41-year-old astonishingly chose not to give Miguel Almiron a yellow card when he motioned for him to provide a booking to a Hammers player—an offense for which Emerson Palmieri had already received a yellow earlier in the game!
Only the first half had gone by! Bankes then gave Newcastle a free kick in the second half after Paqueta had justly taken Sandro Tonali’s position. From that set play, the Magpies went on to score.
One of the worst refereeing performances ever seen at the London Stadium occurred when he was in charge of our 2-1 loss to Brentford in the 2021–2022 season.
Last season, in our 1-1 draw at the London Stadium, Bankes again gave Tottenham the wrong penalty, which VAR later reversed.
After the game, we were charged by the FA because the players had mobbed the referee, although the 41-year-old reffed our draw with Southampton at St Mary’s last term. This happened right after Bankes pitifully stopped Jarrod Bowen from intercepting a Southampton player, just in front of Southampton scoring.
Besides all of that, two seasons ago at the Emirates, Bankes was on VAR duty when Anthony Taylor gave Arsenal a stupidly soft penalty, even though Vladimir Coufal had regained the ball.
During our home encounter against Chelsea a few years ago, Fabian Balbuena received a ridiculous red card from the Premier League referee who was using video assistant replays. It was one of the worst judgments I have ever witnessed in my life.
Peter Bankes’s record for West Ham
Surprisingly, we have only won three of the ten games the 41-year-old has managed for us (Transfermarkt).
We are quite disappointed to learn that Peter Bankes will be using VAR during West Ham vs. Crystal Palace in the Premier League. Let’s only hope that this weekend he doesn’t add any more mistakes to his long list.
The 41-year-old constantly gives off the impression of being an official who enjoys taking center stage. Thus, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit shocked if he attempted to do the same on Sunday.
