By Brian Dick

Copyright birminghammail

Howard Webb has rejected Marco Silva’s claim that Fulham should have been awarded a penalty in their 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa. The vistors were leading 1-0 through a goal from Raul Jimenez when Josh King shot from the edge of the area only to see a sliding Villa’s Matty Cash divert the ball with his trailing arm. Whites boss Silva was left fuming about ‘incredible’ decisions, which also included a booking for diving for King when he clashed with Emi Martinez. Silva said: “Cash did not do it on purpose at all but he made his body bigger with the left hand. “Last week it was a penalty against us but this week it was no penalty.” However, speaking on Sky Sports’ Match Officials Mic’d Up , Webb said referee Andy Madley was right in his interpretation and exonerated Cash. “It’s obviously a shot on goal from Josh King and Matty Cash is trying to block the shot as you’d expect him to do,” the PGMOL chief said. “I’m absolutely certain there’s no deliberate intention to handle the ball here, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be handball. “To commit a handball offence, it can be a deliberate action where you move your arm on purpose to the ball, or you can be penalised for making yourself unnaturally bigger. “So the big question here is whether or not Matty Cash was unnaturally bigger in the action that he took. “So we have to look at the laws of the game to decide whether or not his actions were unnatural, and the laws of the game talk about it being a handball offence when a player touched the ball when they’ve made their body unnaturally bigger. “It goes on to talk about what is unnaturally bigger, and that’s when the position of their hand or arm is not a consequence or justifiable by the player’s body movement for that specific situation. “So when you look at what Matt Cash does, he’s stretching out with his left leg, as a consequence of doing that his left arm comes out a little bit for some balance. “We think this is justifiable for the action of trying to stop the shot. “He can’t do anything with his arm. It’s not raised above his head in a way that wouldn’t be normal for a player that’s trying to block a shot. “It’s closer to his body than that, and he knows really nothing much about it. “So we’ve made a commitment to giving less handballs in the Premier League where players are playing normally and naturally. “We think this one, on balance falls into that category. “Now of course it’s, it’s subjective. But we think, in line with our commitment to only give those handball offences where it’s very clear that the player’s arm is in a position that is not justifiable, we played on here and the referee’s call of no penalty stood.”