Dermot Gallagher has been speaking on Sky Sports about why referee John Brooks had no option but to book Aston Villa defender Matty Cash on Saturday.
Villa picked up a much needed three points last weekend as they recorded an impressive 2-0 victory against Brighton, stopping their horrendous run of form as they picked up just their second win in nine games across all competitions.
Who would be better for Villa?
Wijnaldum!
Luiz!
Cash has been in scintillating form this season which has seen him start every single league game this season, linked with a move to Atletico Madrid and earn his first call-up for the Poland national side.
Given his newfound nationality, Cash revealed a message on Saturday which related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and it was directed at his international colleague Tomasz Kedziora, who plays for Dynamo Kyiv.
While this may have been seen as controversial given the importance of the message, Gallagher believes that the referee had no choice but to caution Cash.
He said: “Well, the referees dislike [the law] because it’s a yellow card and sometimes we’ve seen a second yellow card, you have to send somebody off for a technical offence. Technical offences don’t sit well with referees, but they have to admonish them.
“This one was particularly difficult for the referee, because in the morning, it was felt that if somebody shows an act of solidarity with Ukraine, it would be let go. Normally, political messages aren’t allowed, but the feeling was so strong, it was ‘show empathy’.
“With this, he didn’t lift his shirt to show the message, he actually took his shirt off and made a big thing of it, so the referee was in a difficult position that he had allowed the message to be displayed, but he still had to consider the player taking his shirt off, which was a step too far.”
TIF Thoughts on the Cash booking…
It’s refreshing to hear from Gallagher that referees were briefed before the weekend’s matches that any political messages in support of Ukraine would be allowed to be shown without seeing a yellow card come their way.
However, despite the awful circumstances, given that Cash did take his shirt off, he can’t have many complaints, as at the end of the day, Brooks has a job to do and can only go so far to bend the rules and protect him and is lucky that it was just his first booking of the game.
In other news: Aston Villa share outrageous training ground footage on Instagram