I'm absolutely astounded at the willingness on here to defend such a ridiculous decision and land the blame on our own player instead. While we're analysing the rulebook, is this not the same rulebook that would see ten penalties a game for holding at corners? And is it not the same rulebook that is full of far less ambigious rules that are still enforced so inconsistently week in week out? I don't think I've ever seen a sending off in these circumstances. Not one. So let's not pretend that this is a common situation that everyone should be aware of.
I still have issues with it even having read the rule because what constitutes targetting a player? In case we've somehow forgotten after the abundance of eulogising last night, Hazard happens to be a very good player. He's also Chelsea's most creative player and who they get the ball to the most. Finally, he's one of the most likely players in the league to go down like a bag of shite as soon as he realises that buying a freekick is more likely to succeed than the dribble. We were playing an aggressive game in which we weren't affording their creative players much space (how dare we...) which resulted in Hazard and Willian, in particular, being subjected to a number of fouls. None of these fouls were reckless or dangerous, and I can only really remember a couple that were even arguably cynical. Herrera was punished for his block, for example. The tactic was also working legitimately well, we were winning the ball back or forcing the Chelsea player backwards far more often than we were giving a foul away. But what? This tactic is unfair or unsportsmanlike because it isn't giving their best players the most freedom possible to cause havoc???
I shouldn't care this much, but I went through the report for the game and noted each foul up to the sending off (35 minutes in):
- Herrera's second yellow was United's 8th foul of the game. 9th including the off the ball clash, for which advantage was played.
- It was Herrera's second foul of the game.
- It was the 4th time Hazard won a freekick. The 5th time he was fouled including the clash with Herrera.
- By this time, Willian had also been fouled three times. (Woah. Targeted. The poor soul...)
- Phil Jones had actually only committed two fouls (both on Hazard) when he and Smalling were given a talking to by the ref. The first of which, by the way, was a complete nothing challenge on the edge of Chelsea's area.
- Chelsea only committed one foul during this time with a late challenge by Costa on, ironically, Herrera. It went unpunished.
Herrera wasn't guilty of excessive force (it was never going to be a damaging tackle), nor was he guilty of persistent fouling. You could pick out pretty much any game and see several challenges like Herrera's go completely unpunished with barely a mention, so it was certainly not a nailed on yellow card taken in isolation. Finally, he was not involved in the discussions between Oliver, Smalling and Jones and with less than five seconds between the end of those discussions and his second yellow how can he even be aware that the referee is about to clamp down on the next guy to foul Hazard? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that said discussions were focused on Jones, either. Regardless, that's even allowing for the stupidity of that rule and the way it has been stretched within an inch of its life to try and justify events yesterday. Herrera was unlucky.
It's unjustifiable by any reasonably measure and the latest in a long string of rubbish performances by an incredibly overrated referee.
