Formica dived, claims Moyes

Everton manager David Moyes claims that Mauro Formica dived to win both spot-kicks for Blackburn in Saturday’s Premier League encounter.

A last-gasp penalty from Mikel Arteta handed Moyes’ side their first league win of the season after Christopher Samba was penalised for a foul on Marouane Fellaini inside the area.

Blackburn remarkably squandered two spot kicks of their own before Arteta slotted home the winner in second-half stoppage time to seal a 1-0 result for the visitors.

Asked on his opinion on the spot-kicks, Moyes told reporters: “I think the two Blackburn got were dives and I think ours is a penalty kick. I think the boy (Formica) dives for the two penalty kicks.”

“If you look at it closely, he goes down for both penalty kicks … I think the boy goes down too easily for the kicks and Samba definitely has two hands on Fellaini’s shoulders.”

A tightly contested affair could have gone either way as both sides looked like scoring, but Moyes insisted his side were only interested in victory at Ewood Park.

“We tried to do something to get ourselves a better foothold in the game, I always wanted three points.”

“You look at Blackburn’s home record over the years, they lose very few games at home, I see them a lot over the last few seasons and they’ll not lose too many and I saw them lose against Wolves and they’ve lost today. It’s hard to do that, get back-to-back wins here.”

Blackburn manager Steve Kean was left devastated by the nature of the defeat.

“It’s a tough one to take because we have overall control of the game, especially in the second half when I thought we really took it by the scruff of the neck,” he told Sky Sports.

“There’s not too many games when you get opportunities to put two penalties away.”