Just checking out City's fixtures, to see if any of our rivals could benefit from KDB being out for a while. Surprisingly though, the majority play City away rather than City at home (and you would back City to beat them at home, even without KDB). Only Stoke (10 March), West Ham (28 April) and us (13 May) host City.
Just read elsewhere Zaha did an embarrassing dive....did anyone see it? And if he did does anyone think he will get a ban like the Everton player did?
it was a dive but doubt it will result in a ban. There would have been some sort of 'contact' and in the worlds of Alan Shearer (from a long time ago) he would be 'entitled to go down' ffs
Even if the penalty had gone in (meaning that the incident could have been reviewed), I highly doubt a ban would have been issued. Do I think it was penalty? No. But I didn't think Gray's was for Leicester either (also against City), and yet when that was reviewed no ban was issued. Both incidents are very similar - contact between attacker and defender, but only to the extent that the defender brushes with the attacker as the attacker attempts to go past. The FA set the bar by not banning Gray for that, and I don't see that Zaha's was any worse.
A review can take place even if a penalty is missed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39962886 "Only incidents that result in a player winning a penalty or lead to an opponent being sent off - through either a direct red card or two yellow cards - will be punished." Incidents can be reviewed even if there is contact if the panel believe the player exaggerates it. Niasse of Everton was banned in these circumstances. Zaha's got previous in the diving department, I'd love to see him banned, preferably by Tuesday.
That is quite clear that the penalty does not actually need to be scored (which is how sections of the media had portrayed it as). In any event though, the Niasse incident was a very clear dive in my view. As was the Lanzini incident. Players just throwing themselves to the floor under no contact, as opposed to exaggerating clear contact. The latter is what the Gray incident was, and as I said the FA did not punish him for that. It's a new rule, so the boundaries of it's application are still being learnt. But if the Gray incident is deemed not to be simulation, then I would expect the same to apply to the Zaha incident. (That said, the three man panel making any decision is formed from a pool of people, so inevitably the make-up will be different each time)
I know that one can never really on Arsenal because they are the softest good team that there ever was, but please win this today.
