Premier League referees’ boss Howard Webb has rejected claims that his officials made a mistake by not sending off Diogo Dalot in Saturday’s Manchester derby.
Dalot was booked in the 11th minute of Manchester United’s 2-0 win over Manchester City for a high challenge on Jeremy Doku.
The Portugal international had closed down Doku and stretched out a leg to try to intercept the ball. He made contact with his studs on the knee of the winger.
The video assistant referee (VAR), Craig Pawson, supported Anthony Taylor’s on-field decision of a yellow card saying the contact was “glancing and not with excessive force”.
Professional Game Match Officials boss Webb insists too much has been made of the slow-motion replays and a yellow card was an acceptable outcome.
“The officials on the field saw the actions of Dalot, they saw him stretch forward with his foot, he touches the ball, and then there’s contact on Jeremy Doku,” Webb said on Match Officials Mic’d Up.
“They deemed that to be a reckless action and therefore worthy of a yellow card.
“I know other people think it’s clearly red. I don’t agree – I think there’s a mix of considerations.
“I know that when we look at this, we see that the point of contact is on the knee, but we also have to factor in speed, force and intensity.
“You’ll not see many red cards in the Premier League for serious foul play that don’t involve those things.
“Now, we evaluate those things through a full-speed view of the incident. Without looking at it at full speed, you get kind of a distorted view. You don’t get a true picture of how much force and speed there was in the challenge.
“That foot touches the knee, comes off pretty quickly. We can see on slow-mo that it does touch that knee.
“But at full speed, when you play it in real time, you can see there’s not a great deal of speed in the action. Not a lot of intensity.
“We were heavily criticised a few years ago for using slow motion and freeze frames, because people said this is not reality, it’s not how the game is played.
“When you slow it down it can look a lot worse – and it does. When you freeze frame it, you can make a lot of situations look like red-card offences.
“So, it’s difficult for me to hear people make a judgment on this just by analysing freeze frames and slow motion, coming to the consideration that it’s red on that basis.”
Many former players believed that Dalot should have been sent off.
Former England striker Alan Shearer told BBC Sport: “I think VAR got that terribly wrong. For me that was a clear red card.
“Forget about whether the contact was ‘glancing’ or not. I can understand why the referee hasn’t given it, it might have been difficult for him to see it, but when the VAR has two professionals looking at that, it should have been a very easy decision to give a red card.”
But Webb insists the on-field decision should stand whichever way it had gone and the VAR was right not to intervene.
“Yes, it could be red, but you have to think about the need to look at it at full speed,” Webb added.
“Therefore, I think in this situation it was right to leave it as the referee’s call. If red had been given, I would have expected the red card to stand as well.
“Is there excessive force? Some will say yes, I am not quite there but I can see that there could be. It’s a subjective judgement.
“You see it at full speed – is there excessive force? I’m not sure, maybe, but I’m absolutely aligned that once that decision’s taken on-field that we leave it as referee’s call and we don’t intervene with the video.”
