City all set to tackle FA
MANCHESTER CITY will call on Premier League clubs to back their campaign against heinous tacklers.
The runaway league leaders want the FA to change their rules so that yellow cards can be upgraded to reds.
City have already contacted referees’ chief Mike Riley to ask why dangerous challenges are
not being properly punished. And the answer from the boss of the PGMOL – the organisation responsible for officials in the top four divisions – was that their hands are tied by FA regulations when it comes to asking for retrospective action to be implemented.
If a referee gives a free-kick or shows a yellow card, he is deemed to have seen the incident.
And the FA are reluctant to introduce legislation, which, they fear, will both undermine officials and lead to games being refereed after the event has taken place.
FIFA announced, in 2012, that individual associations have the power to upgrade yellow cards – and top European nations, such as Italy and France, already have a disciplinary procedure in place.
Now, City will argue that – after implementing VAR, as well as a system which allows for retrospective bans for diving – the FA must make protecting players from potentially careerending tackles their No.1 priority.
And they believe that other clubs will support them in an era where losing a player for a month could cost them £1million in wages.
A City insider said: “It is the duty of all the guardians of the game to do what they can to protect players.
“Bringing in measures to ensure that referees get things like penalty decisions and offside calls correct are laudable, but trying to improve the safety of players has to be the priority.
“It is ludicrous that a player can be banned for diving after the game, but someone committing a dangerous tackle can go unpunished, if the referee hasn’t seen the incident clearly.
“It isn’t the referees that are the problem, it’s the disciplinary system itself.”
City sent a dossier to Riley, cataloguing a series of overthe-top and dangerous tackles on their Quadruple-chasing team, which had failed to bring the red-card censure that, they believed, was deserved.
And boss Pep Guardiola has now urged the club to step up the pressure on the FA after coming to the conclusion that match officials are being let down by a flawed disciplinary system.
Ironically, the only player who has been both booked AND retrospectively punished by the FA is former City defender Ben Thatcher.
Thatcher was only cautioned for a horrific forearm smash into the head of Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes in August 2006, which prompted widespread outrage.
The Portuguese midfielder was knocked unconscious and needed hospital treatment afterwards.
Thatcher was shown a yellow card by referee Dermot Gallagher.
But the incident was so reckless that City took the decision to ban their own player for six games and fine him six weeks’ wages.
Yet the FA then charged Thatcher with “serious foul play” and he was subsequently banned for eight matches and given a further 15-match ban, which was suspended for two years.