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Roy Keane on Ryan Gravenberch’s red card against Manchester City:
“I watched it back because I thought I must have missed something.
Gravenberch is already on a yellow. Doku is trying to get away, Ryan tries to get a foot to the ball, catches him and the referee gives the foul. Fine. Nobody is arguing about the foul.
Then Chris Kavanagh reaches for his pocket again.
I said, ‘What’s he doing?’
The lad next to me goes, ‘He’s sending him off.’
‘For that?’
And there it is. Second yellow. Liverpool bloody down to 10 men.
Now people will say, ‘Roy, he was already booked. He should know better.’ Of course he should be careful. But being on a yellow card doesn’t mean you stop being a footballer. He’s allowed to compete for the ball.
Look at the challenge. He’s not flying in with both feet. He’s not going over the top of the ball. He doesn’t wipe Doku out with some wild lunge. He’s trying to make a challenge, gets it wrong, and Doku gets back up.
It’s around the middle of the pitch. Gravenberch isn’t the last defender. We’re not talking about a striker clean through on goal. You can give a free kick there and carry on playing football.
And don’t start telling me the referee had no choice. He did have a choice. That’s the whole point.
Someone said, ‘But Roy, the referee doesn’t have to warn him first.’
I said, ‘I know the rules. I’m not asking him to send Ryan a letter.’
A warning isn’t compulsory. A bit of judgement would be nice, though. You’re about to take one of the best players on the pitch out of Liverpool against Manchester City. You’d better be certain the challenge deserves another booking.
I thought Gravenberch was excellent in that first half. Taking the ball under pressure, driving past City players, making their midfield turn and chase him. He was giving Liverpool a way to get up the pitch.
And then he’s walking down the tunnel for a challenge that, to me, is an ordinary foul.
You could see what happened to the game afterwards. City have an extra man, Liverpool have lost a player who was carrying them through midfield, and suddenly the whole thing changes.
I played for Manchester United. I’ve got no reason to sit here making excuses for Liverpool. If Gravenberch had gone in recklessly, I’d be the first to say he deserved it.
But I played in enough of these matches to know the difference between a player losing his head and a player getting his timing wrong.
Ryan got his timing wrong. The referee, in my opinion, got the bigger decision wrong.
And the worst part? Tomorrow people will look at the score and say City were simply too good.
What we do know is that at 0–0, with eleven against eleven, Liverpool were in the game. That’s the match I wanted to see finished.
Not one decided by a referee who seemed in a greater hurry to reach for his pocket than to think about what he’d actually seen.”
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