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It was an absurd decision. Definitely a yellow for the trip. But extremely harsh as a red.
Some of these pundits and former refs saying "from a still image it was clearly dangerous and violent". Are you kidding me?! Why look at a still image when there are video replays from multiple angles?! Maybe because from the videos you can see it wasn't as bad as the still image makes it to look, and you want to confirm your own bias?
The fact that PGMOL wanted to double down on it knowing full well it was only a trip is ridiculous!
They only want to cover each other's backs. It's been obvious from the start but was essentially confirmed by Mike Dean on that podcast appearance. Utterly inexcusable really.
The biggest issue for me is VAR not overturning it during the game. I get the on-field ref having to make a decision from behind the play at full speed. He might have thought he saw something bad. But the whole point of VAR is to tell the ref there was something off that needs to be looked at.
That said, Oliver should have started with a yellow and asked VAR if he should look at it for a red. It was ridiculous to start with straight red for something that looked in real time like a normal tripping. In slow motion you can see there is slightly more to it with studs on the upper foot, but it's still a yellow. But the stats show Oliver has it out for Arsenal. I hate the Gunners as much as any right-thinking person out there, but when Oliver has given Liverpool 0 reds in 50 games, Manchester 1 red in 53 games, and Arsenal 7 reds in 54 games then you have to look at that as a crazy outlier.