Should joey have been booked? The ref was losing control and we all know that generally the next thing they do is book someone. Did Joey's foul warrant a booking? Is he always picked on? Or is it that, until he is booked, he very professionally has a little go evey tackle which is every 5 mins or so . Therefore by the law of averages his will be the next tackle/niggle/booking? It is noticeable and I suppose impressive how, this season, once he is booked, he holds off slightly every subsequent chanllenge for fear of seeing a red card.
Yes he should. At least on the basis that it was a blatant foul. Refs are often said to even things out when they get something wrong. That didn't happen and Barton lost it for a while. The ref clearly got a number of decisions very wrong though and Bournemouth were very lucky not to lose at least one man last night. It will be nice if at some point, a referee shows some even-handedness and actually penalises players who deliberately try to rough Barton up purely in order to get their chance to audition for Britain's got Talent for their impressions of a dying swan while incidentally giving their side a numerical advantage.
I agree with Yorkie that Barton was correctly booked, but their bloke (Arter?) who stamped on Barton should have been sent off and their player who deliberately ran into Hoilett's back and collapsed as if he'd been shot should have been booked.
I thought it was harsh for a second foul (I think, and the first was highly debatable) and particularly so in the context of the game when he'd deemed a quiet word acceptable for Arter who had just committed as obvious an example of violent conduct as you could hope to find.
