I thought that the commentary played a bit of a part in what your average viewer was seeing. Silva goes down (again) gets a swift booking and the commentary team are straight away (rightly) referring to how embarrassing his performance had been etc. So you immediately just think “dive”.
For the record I am about 60% on the side of no penalty and 40% on a penalty. However that was about 95%/5% after the first replay, 90%\10% on the second replay and so on. The more you see it the more you see the contact. For that reason, and because of the subjectivity of almost everyone’s comments on the incident, I can see why the referee has given it.
It’s also for me though another black mark against VAR……the first image they show the ref (assuming our live pictures are the same as the ref sees at the monitor) were of the foot against the leg as a still shot. This isn’t a new groundbreaking opinion but they should, at least, show the referee again in normal speed with the full incident and then the slow-mo etc as required.
For the bitter paranoid Celtic fans reading I’m not saying it’s a definite penalty.
For the bitter paranoid Rangers fans reading I’m not saying it definitely shouldn’t be a penalty.