Tottenham Hotspur fans may be slightly shocked to hear what former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher had to say about Dejan Kulusevski live on Sky Sports.
Kulusevski has certainly been an inspired loan signing by Tottenham, with the Sweden international forming a formidable partnership with both Harry Kane and Son Heung-min having already netted three goals and registered six assists.
Should Kulusevski have been sent off?
Yes!
No!
He has started all of the last 10 league games under Conte and featured in the last 12 after only being handed five starts in Serie A with his parent club Juventus during the first half of the season.
However, it hasn’t all been rosy for the winger, as last weekend, with Spurs struggling against Brighton and the score at 0-0, Kulusevski launched his elbow back at Marc Cucurella, appearing to catch the Spaniard in the face – albeit it not a great deal – but VAR did not see anything wrong with the incident.
Gallagher was speaking on Sky Sports News’ Ref Watch about the incident and believes that the referee and VAR team did the right thing in not upgrading the incident to a red card.
He said: “I never once thought, when I watched it on Saturday, that he would get sent off. I think he reacts stupidly, really, when you look at it because he does run a risk. I think he throws his arm back more in petulance – it’s not thrown back with a crook of the elbow as a weapon, it doesn’t hit him in the face, it’s not done with real malice, so I thought a yellow card was right, I thought the referee judged it right.”
TIF Thoughts on Kulusevski’s elbow…
While Gallagher claims that Kulusevski doesn’t catch Cucurella, it appears from the footage shown that he did in fact catch the Spaniard in the face, so by all accounts, was very lucky to not have seen a red card brandished his way.
If he was handed his marching orders for an elbow to the face of an opponent, most Spurs fans would surely have had no complaints as players simply can’t raise their hands or elbows to another person as it can cause serious harm.
In other news: Sky Sports man now hints Harry Kane may lose one of his close Spurs ‘buddies’ this season