Queens Park Rangers manager Neil Warnock has launched a verbal attack on the English Football Association (FA) by calling the decision to uphold midfielder Joey Barton‘s red card as “farcical” and “scandalous”.
Barton was sent-off in the West London team’s 1-2 defeat at home to Norwich City for an alleged head-butt on Bradley Johnson. However, replays showed that Barton had moved his head towards the Norwich player but did not make any contact.
The midfielder tweeted after the match that the referee had been “conned” into showing him a red card.
After the sending-off, QPR appealed against the referee’s decision, but the FA upheld the red card which means Barton will have to serve a three-match ban.
“I am not surprised, but it is difficult to accept when you see what Dempsey did in comparison with Joey Barton. It is farcical, isn’t it? Whenever you see something happen on the field of play that warrants a red card, if the linesman sees that offence they flag and flag until the referee goes towards him, tells him what he has seen and then the lad is sent off,” Warnock was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
“I know they have got to look after themselves but I feel really let down as a manager and a club that three invisible people (on the disciplinary commission) can look at that and not look at the linesman and take that into consideration. If he did see it, why did he not flag immediately and keep his flag up?”
“When you get people like (former referee) Graham Poll, who is not my biggest fan, and Dermot Gallagher supporting what I am saying then the three people on the commission go against that, I just think it is scandalous but I am not surprised,” he added.
0 votes
