Wenger Won’t Appeal Red Card

Arsene Wenger has applied the common sense that Alan Pardew lacks, in his reactions to Gilberto’s sending off at Ewood park yesterday.

The FA very rarely speak out against their own referee’s as not to undermine their decisions, and as the ref ‘saw’ what went on yesterday, Wenger pretty much know any such appeal would fail, possibly, as Pardew found out, resulting in a further ban.

Bert rather stupidly kicked out at Savage after the Welsh moron clattered into him, TWICE, from behind. We all know what Mr. Silva did was wrong, but surely the correct decision would have been to book, or send both off.

‘He will miss three matches. To me the red card looked harsh because the first foul was made by Savage. Gilberto reacted a bit too much because he was kicked after the referee had blown the whistle. Ideally he should not have reacted at all but he told me he didn’t touch Savage. There is not a lot we can do about it, we had to accept it and we gave the right response. We played 80 minutes with 10 men and still kept going forward every time we could.’ said Wenger

‘Usually appeals don’t work when the referee has seen it so we could even get one game more! We don’t want to take that chance.’

‘I felt that Savage went in an aggressive way to Gilberto. I felt that if you send Gilberto off then you should send Savage off as well, although I need to see the incident again. The referee was very close to the action and decided to give Savage a yellow for the first foul, which he deserved. He applied the law to the letter, that means a red card for retaliation and a yellow for a bad foul, so he can defend his case. But in the spirit of the game I think both could have gone.’

So that is that. Next up, Manchester United, without Gilberto. As if the task wasn’t hard enough already.