Lepkowski and Goldberg disagree over Furlong red card
West Brom suffered a 3-0 defeat over the weekend against Fulham, in a game which saw defender Darnell Furlong receive a red card.
With the Baggies already two goals down, the timing of the sending off meant that any chances of a comeback vanished.
In Furlong’s defence, he made a genuine attempt to win the ball, but denied the opposition a clear goal-scoring opportunity which led to his early bath.
Discussing this on the Liquidator, Chris Lepkowski said, “I think that the referee was watching a different sequence of events. In my view, he was making a judgement on the momentum of the Furlong’s movement. In real-time, it looked like a foul and that’s what the referee had to rely on.”
To which Adrian Goldberg responded, “You could see that Furlong had an intention to win the ball and if you looked at it from another angle, he did that. I do not think that merited a sending off.”
Tough one
We can see the merits in both arguments, but it seems hard to disagree with Goldberg in this instance.
It wasn’t hard for the referee to see that Furlong clearly intended, and successfully did, so sending him off for that was bizarre, to say the least.
It took away the sting from the game and crashed any hopes in the minds of the Baggies players of a possible comeback.
This is not the right thing and the referee must take the blame for that.
There was another instance when Robert Snodgrass appeared to have his elbow raised and surprisingly, he wasn’t sent off for that.
West Brom’s performances were far from impressive, but these kinds of inconsistencies should be eliminated as a lot rides on these decisions during matches.
In other West Brom news, Sky Sports pundit tears into a Baggies player for having a ‘Disaster’ in Saturday’s loss to Fulham
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