I’ve never seen a more obvious yellow card be met with such outrage than the one that saw Callum Slattery receive his marching orders off Nick Walsh on Saturday at Fir Park.
Richard Foster, a Motherwell employee, went in two-footed on the Rangers midfielder claiming that it was his reaction that saw the second yellow card come out, Richard Gordon of the BBC going further as to say that the home side were “cheated” onthe Sportsound podcast – I’d love to know who he was directing that “editorially fair” comment at.
Now, we have Kenny Miller, speaking on Go Radio, demanding that rules are changed so that officials can look at second yellows it it leads to a sending off, via The Daily Record:
“Cantwell goes down like a sack of potatoes holding his face, when it looks like he hit him in the neck. I didn’t really like that, but even if he did catch him in the face that it’s a yellow card, or a second yellow card.
“There is no excessive force in it. You have seen players who have had a little check where the pressure is coming from, and throw their arm back.
“Slattery’s eyes are fixed on the ball. He can feel the pressure and he puts his arms up to stop the pressure coming into him and the ball.
“That was my initial thought, because I know how people behave. Referees have got to have an understanding of situations in the game.
“Again, I think that is very, very harsh. What I would say is the rule needs to be looked at on that. Motherwell are going down to 10 men, and Rangers are probably going to win against 11 men.”
First of all, the image above clearly shows Slattery making contact with Cantwell’s face. How or why and with what force is irrellevant, he has hit him in the face. There can be no argument about that.
Now, if he had been sent off for this then we would have to have a debate because it wasn’t excessive force but this doesn’t apply for yellow cards.
And this is half the problem with the Scottish footballing media, they don’t understand the laws of the game and form their opinions on what they think they are, not what they actually are.
On any pitch, in any league, anywhere in the world, if you strike an opponent in the face it will be a yellow card, unless, of course, the injured party happens to be wearing a Rangers shirt it would appear.