Hey Tom, while you’re around, please can you give the benefit of your knowledge of the laws, regarding the Digne dismissal? Steve Grant on the TSP Podcast said that Kevin Friend would have been perfectly entitled to look at the attempted trip on KWP, and the treading on his Achilles a couple of seconds later, as all part of one offence. Is that actually possible under the laws?
Not sure if he could have treated it as one offence. In theory if he thought the 2nd offence was only worth a yellow he could have shown Digne 2 yellows for both fouls. It certainly wouldn't have done Digne any favours with the referee at all though.
I'm sure I remember Chris Baird getting sent off for 2 yellows in one passage of play for Northern Ireland.
That’s what I thought. As I said earlier, in theory he could have played advantage for the trip, and then given 2 yellows for the 2 fouls. I still think the second one was a straight red anyway though, it was nasty.
One of the best pieces of refereeing I can recall. Far too often, when advantage is played for the first yellow, the player is essentially allowed a free second chance, knowing that the referee will never be brave enough to book him for both.
To be fair, the club did plenty to feed that narrative a few years back. All that stuff about the Black Box, and the myth that our recruiting was so good we could keep selling our best players and get away with it. We didn’t get away with it, we nearly got relegated, but at least our lack of success kept the vultures from circling. I hope we have developed a strategy since whereby we will at least make things as difficult as possible for the big clubs when they start sniffing round our squad.
And not sell half the 1st team in the same transfer window. For me, there is little you can do to stop players leaving to bigger clubs. But you do have some say of when they leave as well as how much for - control the controllables!!
Yeah, exactly. Money will always talk, and the clubs with the biggest cheque books will generally get their man if they are determined enough, and willing to pay whatever it takes. But that doesn't mean we are powerless to resist and have to just roll over.
Its odd how wolves finished in a similar position to us a few seasons ago and kept their players - and Tarore, Jimenez and Neves on £40k a week. Edit: these players are set to double their wages with new contracts this month. I suppose keeping hold of a good manager is the priority, then players will commit. So Ralphs new contract should help a lot.
Yeah, definitely think Ralph is a huge positive in terms of players hopefully wanting to be part of his project. And he certainly comes across as the sort of guy who genuinely wants to reward the club’s recent loyalty to him.
Fair points. The black box became a bit of joke ultimately. Seems as if we are in fairly good hands currently.
Everton's Lucas Digne's 3 match ban for his red card against Southampton has been reduced to a 1 game ban. What sort of message does that send out?
Depends what their argument was, this would make sense if Digne's initial foul on KWP - then advantage played - then the next fouls, amounted to a double yellow
This has turned out exactly as Ancelotti wanted. His position was that it wasn’t worthy of a 3 match ban, not that it wasn’t a dismissable offence. He seems to have singlehandedly rewritten the rule book for the FA.