I appreciate this may all be academic with McGregor likely to miss the rest of the season, but for me that's no reason why on a point of principle the club should not appeal his red card at The Hammers. For me with covering defenders it deffo wasn't a red card, a goal scoring opportunity was not denied, so why no news of an appeal which normally follows the day after the game? Like I said it seems McGregor won't be fit for our next two competitive games at least anyway but that's not the point. At least this way Mike Dean has to explain his decision which will also revolve around missing the deliberate hand ball before.
It wasn't even a penalty idont think, Diame had successfully taken and scuffed his shot then charged into McGregor. Even if it was a penalty, it wouldn't have been without a savage handball completely changing the course of the ball, it would have bounced into McGregors hands. And as you say it was cleared so even though it was a goal scoring opportunity it didn't go in.
Yup, announced on the FA website too. Great news. http://www.thefa.com//news/governance/2014/mar/allan-mcgregor-appeal-upheld
Shame they can't remove the goal from the penalty and give us both a point each, but yeah, thats good news. You know when a player like him looks ****ed, that its serious, and he really looked ****ed.
It is great news but just makes it all the more galling that we had to play most of the game a man short, and lost obviously. That linesman needs stringing up.
I'm still a bit confused. Have the FA rescinded the red because it wasn't a penalty (due to the handball) or have they deemed it still to be penalty but not a goal scoring opportunity ?
It'll come in the cup final. 89 minutes and still 0-0 before Aluko breaks into the Arsenal box and is brought down by Sagna. Penalty! And the rest is history!
You see I wouldn't have appealed this one since there's no actual benefit (unless there's some serious fine to be paid for a red card that we'll save now) We made a fair few comments about the Spurs handball. I'm pretty sure we appealed McG's red earlier in the season. Then we contested against the Boyd spitting charge. Then we've said we considered legal action to clear Boyd's name (Bruce in a press conference said it was considered because Boyd was that miffed about it and wanted to clear his name). We've got the club threatening legal action against the FA over the name change issue. And now we've appealed against a red card for a player who's not going to serve the suspension either way due to his injury. Whether we've been right or wrong with those complaints on principle, we hadn't achieved anything with any of the previous appeals so we could easily seem to be whinging really loudly and making pointless protests about everything. It might have worked in our interests to let this one go, so that if there's another dodgy red card we want to appeal in the next couple of months we've got more than "well we didn't make a fuss to you about the Pardew headbutt" as way of suggesting we only complain when there's a good reason to. If we'd let this one ride it sort of lets the balance swing back a bit without it costing us anything. Maybe it'll work the opposite way in that having finally won one they'll see we do sometimes get the wrong decisions given so some of our complaints are legitimate, but if I was going into an appeal hearing and I knew the defendents routinely appealed everything regardless of the likely outcome I'd be more to the "why do you think it was wrong" approach than the "what do I think it should have been" approach. It's a small difference, but it could be the difference in a 50:50 call.
Bit more cloak and dagger? Brucey speaks to Riley, he asks Mike Dean did you get wrong and he says on reflection yes boss. They contact the panel and appeal is a good'un!
