THE SAGGIES
Bilic despair at VAR red card as 10-man West Brom simply surrender to Palace
WEST BROM 1 CRYSTAL PALACEACE 5
SLAVEN BILIC ripped into referee Paul Tierney’s rney’s decision to red-card Matheus heus Pereira – and admitted the West Brom star’s dismissal shattered ered the Baggies.
Bilic’s strugglers were level at 1-1 with Crystal Palace when en Pereira tangled with Patrick van Aanholt lt and appeared to kick out. VAR got involved olved after Tierney at
first just gave Pereira a yellow card. The official then produced a red after consulting the pitchside monitor in the 34th minute.
Baggies boss Bilic, who saw his 10 men collapse to a crushing defeat, said: “The Pereira sending-off was a key moment in the game. It was a cheap one.
“For me, if the referee saw the reaction and gave him a red card straight away then I would understand it. But the more you watch it, the less it is a red card.
“Maybe there’s a little contact. I would say a reaction is there, but it wasn’t a kick. If he gives them an option to give him a red card, you can’t do it.”
Bilic felt the decision changed the game as, after Conor Gallagher (above) had brought West Brom back into it with a first-half equaliser, they imploded.
Palace ran amok after the interval with Wilfried Zaha and Christian Benteke scoring twice.
Bilic said: “Up until the red card we were playing well and creating chances.
”It looked like we were on top of our game.
“After that, it was one-way traffic. We collapsed in the second half and it was too easy for Palace.
“I’m not happy with the way we collapsed at 2-1 – you can’t do that. For us to be competitive and strong, we need all of them on the pitch.
“We didn’t mark, everybody was thinking and relying on their teammate to do the job.
“It’s a heavy defeat and a big blow. It’s easy to find excuses, but now we need to find the reasons as to why it happened.
“We are very disappointed but our next game is against Newcastle. It gives us a chance to get back to the level we were at recently.”