....Everton were robbed against Liverpool, the first penalty wasn't a penalty, the foul if it even was a foul, was outside the box. And the linesman gave it as in. After that, the referee pulled out a yellow card, Gerrard said something to him, and he put the card away and pulled out a red card instead. Then Everton had a proper penalty claim dissalowed, then in extra time after Liverpool got their 2nd penalty (which was a penalty) Lescot got dragged down in the box again and no penalty was given, again. the ref was looking straight at it, and not that far away.
I agree that Everton we're probably robbed of a point here, but from what I've just seen, the penalty decisions in Liverpool's favour were justified.
For the first, there's the standard argy-bargy that goes on in every 1-on-1 challenge, shirt tugging from both players and arms out. The contact resulting in the penalty itself, namely the barge into Gerrard's legs occurs right on the edge of the box, i.e. Penalty.
What's surprising to me is that so many people are conveniently overlooking the fact that not only is Gerrard speaking to the ref afterwards, but he's also wearing a headset, and listening to the linesman who made the decision as you've pointed out, that the contact was in the area. After that regardless of who appears to have said what, it's a case of sticking to the rules of the game. "Last defender denying a goalscoring opportunity = Red Card." (Happened in the Man U game too. Red Card. No surprise there, correct decision.)
Watching the incident, he reaches into his shorts pocket, and pulls out the book, and the yellow card together. They're the most commonly used pieces of his disciplinary arsenal. His red card is kept separate in his shirt pocket. He's obviously not able to separate them to pull out the book without the card, and he then goes to put his yellow card back in his pocket as Gerrard walks past, while obviously protesting that the last man brought him down.
If he'd kept both red & yellow cards in his shirt pocket, could he be relied upon to whip out the right coloured card first time every time? I doubt it, unless they had different textures. So if he pulls out 1 card, finds it's not the right one and swaps it, does that make it wrong?
We can speculate and lip-read all day, but you & I will never know what came through the ref's headset, when a split second, heated decision like that has to be made.
"Kung Fu" Kuyt should've gone for his flying kick, and the second Lescott incident looked worse than the first, but the referee has been dealing with Yakubu collapsing like a sack of spanners all game under the most innocuous challenges. With the effort that players go to these days to simulate incidents, the referees have to be careful, and he probably displayed that with Lescott too. Not saying he's right to do so in this instance, but players don't help themselves nowadays, it's pervasive right throughout the football leagues!
There are easy decisions (Phil Neville!) and hard ones. Clattenburg won't be the first (Rob Styles?) nor the last to make a wrong one this season. There'll be teams that get punished & teams that benefit, (Man U undoubtably benefitted from a harsh dismissal of Reo-Coker, wrong decision.) and I've now seen Liverpool both sides of that already this season. What's gutting is that if they'd scored the easy chances, Voronin, Riise & Sissoko (not surprised by Momo's miss though!
) and been leading anyway, such controversy shouldn't have happened!
Wouldn't want to be on the Derby bus home tonight! 6 - nil!! 
Our defence sucks. 
) 
.... Cech is not having a good season, he's been pretty ropey so far... and why did Arsenal have to concede that goal? That cost me 4 points on the fantasy football 
