Friend's performance in the Palace-Liverpool match drew criticism / Mike Hewitt/GettyImages
Following his controversial giving of a penalty during Liverpool's win at Crystal Palace, referee Kevin Friend will not officiate a game in the next round of Premier League fixtures.
When Diogo Jota went down under a challenge from Vicente Guaita, Friend awarded the Reds a penalty kick, with replays showing the Portugal international initiating the contact.
Friend had initially given a goal kick but was then asked by video assistant referee Craig Pawson to review the replay, with Fabinho converting the penalty after it was awarded to earn the Reds a 3-1 victory.
PGMOL, the governing organization for English football match officials, claims that they rotate their Select Group 1 officials on a weekly basis, with three referees on each EFL match.
After the game, Palace manager Patrick Vieira was enraged, saying: "He [Jota] was really intelligent, while the referee and VAR were both naive. He had no chance of getting the ball back in time to score. I'm not even going to bring it up.
"We've had talks with officials, and they've indicated that there won't be any penalties if there's benign contact." I'm looking at everything and can't figure out how that penalty is possible.
"That dashed our aspirations of getting back into the game and earning a point." The referee and VAR made an extremely bad judgement."
Although both sides are in FA Cup play before both Premier League fixtures, Paul Tierney will referee Palace's trip to Norwich on Wednesday and Chris Kavanagh will referee Liverpool's meeting against Leicester on Thursday.
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