Last week, Arsenal came into Hill Dickinson Stadium and beat Everton 1-0 on a clear and obvious handball by Jake O'Brien. I doubt there's an Everton supporter on the planet who could argue that the referee got that call wrong.
But later in that game, Everton striker Thierno Barry was kicked in the back of his ankle in the box by an Arsenal defender, but the VAR official deemed the contact was insufficient to garner a penalty, an absolutely ridiculous reading of a rule that's wildly ambiguous.
Everton would go on to lose, of course, by that single goal in a match where the league leaders didn't play particularly well. In a reasonable world, the home side would have had a chance to equalize. Maybe the score stays that way, or maybe being tied changes the face of the match, who is to say.
But it's clear that Everton should have had a chance to earn a point.
This weekend's match at Turf Moor against Burnley was a tough watch. The hosts are in a relegation scrap, and Everton were without four of its best players in Iliman Ndiaye, Idrissa Gana Gueye, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, and Jack Grealish, with the latter a surprise scratch after coming down with an illness earlier in the week.
So it wasn't terribly surprising that the two sides stumbled their way to a 0-0 draw, with both clubs showing little signs of life throughout the contest.
And yet, in the 86th minute, Tyler Dibling sent in a shot from just outside the box, which very clearly hit the hand of Burnley's Jaidon Anthony in the box, causing several Everton players to raise their arms in protest.
VAR intervened and didn't even bother sending referee Craig Pawson to the monitor to check for himself, later indicating that proximity was the culprit as to why the penalty wasn't given. And yet, just a few weeks ago, Dewsbury-Hall was deemed to have committed a penalty against Brighton when the ball struck his tucked-away arm from even closer.
Nobody here is here to argue that Everton played well enough to get results in either match. But Arsenal didn't either last weekend and got all three points, while Burnley were plenty bad and earned a shared point with the Toffees today.
The consistency of these calls is the issue. And going on two weeks, Everton had rather clear penalties just glossed over by referees and VAR, impacting the club's ability to earn maximum points from games.
Sure, the team should play better and not allow these decisions to have such a major impact on the outcomes. But when the circumstances happen that break the rules of the game, they have to be given, no matter what badge the team in question is wearing.