Howard Webb has revealed his view on whether it was wrong for Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly to be sent off against Wolves for his challenge on Matt Doherty.
Lewis-Skelly was handed a red card by referee Michael Oliver but the decision was overturned after an appeal by Arsenal.
Arsenal spent more than half the game playing with 10 men but ultimately won 1-0.
They have since been find £65,000 for their players behaving in an ‘improper way’ when Lewis-Skelly was sent off.
In Tuesday’s episode of Match Official’s Mic’d Up on Sky Sports, the audio involving Oliver as well as the VAR officials is released.
And Webb reveals that he thinks it was wrong for Lewis-Skelly to be sent off, but that it was not unreasonable for him to be.
‘From the outset, we would prefer a yellow card in this situation,’ said Webb.
Clearly the referee on the day felt the actions of Myles Lewis-Skelly, he saw the player moving in towards an opponent without any ability or intention of playing the ball – with the intention of stopping the opponent. And the referee sees a raised foot make high contact and the opponent went down.
‘The referee felt it was serious foul play, the VAR checked the footage to see if the call was clearly and obviously wrong and he felt it wasn’t – seeing that the contact was quite high up on the leg.
‘But we know that for serious foul play, we need excessive force or brutality and what we see here is that high contact [just] glancing and coming off the leg quite quickly.
‘So for that reason, everybody pretty much in the game has formed the same conclusion that this is falling short of serious foul play – because of that glancing contact. Because the studs don’t really go right into the leg, they glance in before coming down onto the foot.
‘There are some considerations that might support a red card, but there are a whole host of others that say it is not quite there, so on balance we would rather this had been a yellow card,’ said Webb.
‘The VAR didn’t want to re-referee the situation, they were mindful of the referee’s call standing unless it is clearly and obviously wrong. They felt it wasn’t at that level on the day and decided to leave it as a red card on the field.
‘I’ve heard this described as a really horrendous officiating decision. It’s not! I understand why the referee saw this on the day as a serious foul-play action.
‘We have to be careful about slowing things down and freeze-framing things. We’ve talked about not doing that, it can distort reality. We have to look at it in full speed, it is glancing [studs] and does come off quite quickly.
‘But it’s an understandable on-field decision. Yes we feel the VAR should have been involved, but at the same time I can kind of understand why that didn’t happen in the moment.
‘We listen to the game, we feed back to the officials to try to ensure that we are in line with the expectations of the game and how we judge these things.’
More to follow.
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