I am delighted to read this. If we had not appealed, that would have been tantamount an expression of 'guilt'. It is likely gamesmanship for that very reason as I think very unlikely will be rescinded. Extremely happy to be wrong.
Graham poll has written interesting commet on beeb saying that Barton should not have got a card, whereas Lampard should have done. Maybe the fa will listen to views of an ex referee
Do they review just the 'intent to headbutt' incident or everything leading up to it? If they're looking at the whole incident i can't see it being rescinded. He does too much wrong, pushing and shoving, arms flying. Though he gives as good as he gets from Whitbread and Johnson. Could they be retrospectively punished? Could Johnson be retrospectively punished for acting? And surely the linesman will be punished for not flagging when he supposedly first saw it?
....and knowing the FA, I can't imagine the tweets and interviews are going to help our case. We'll probably see it extended to a 4 match ban.
While Dermot Gallagher (referee evalulator or whatever they're called) has said that the correct decision was made.
gallagher nearly always says the ref made the right decision - maybe a bit of karma for when barton went down when "punched" by gervinho. They might use the recent footage of the liverpool/fulham game - a fulham player stuck his head against bellamy's head and it was bellamy who was booked
Furthermore, I remember some of our players being hit a lot harder in the midst of tackles, where your aggression can be disguised as mistake. Helguson got a proper whack on the head towards the end of the game and went down genuinely holding his head (quite close to the linesman) and the game carried on. To HH's credit, he got up and rubbed the pain off.
