Arsenal v Leicester

Just seen the Vardy incident. The movement of the left leg is completely unnatural . It is a no look backward kick. " I am not going down without a fight" type. I am sure he didn't mean to kick his face but that movement was completely unnecessary. Red for me.

I'm only sending a player off in such circumstances on a 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt' basis. Therefore, not guilty

For me there is way too much doubt on the Vardy challenge to make it a red. He might have meant it but I'd need to be at least 80 or 90% certain it was and I'm nowhere near that.

Can't really be compared to the Nketiah one, as for that he has consciously made a challenge that has ended up using excessive force and clearly endangered the opponent. I don't for a minute think there was any intent or malice in it, but he has made the decision to make that challenge and therefore has to face the consequences. Whereas Vardy has caught his opponent who is on the floor in the act of falling following a fair challenge, I respect the views of anyone who thinks he deliberately kicked him but I just can't be sure enough to take that view. It would also have been out of context with the game, there had been no warning signs before and nothing after, and had they been winding each other up you can be sure that Mustafi and probably his team mates would have been making more of it than they did.

Looks deliberate (that's not how normal people fall) and the fact it's Vardy just makes me more certain.
Red card

Looked at this several times, first view Vardy has the benefit of the doubt, the more I see it the more I view it as deliberate. But, on first viewing he gets away with it......

Dunno. I am torn. Vardy certainly has the temperament. But he does seem to have a genuine look of shock on his face at catching the opponent.
Sadly, this is how players fall in the Premier league as they exaggerate everything in the hope they will get a foul awarded to them and on this occasion Mustafi has felt the force of it.
I'm under no illusion as well that the lack of reaction from Arsenal players suggests they didn't feel Vardy purposefully kicked Mustafi.
Slow mo always makes things look worse, and you could perhaps be lead into believing something that isn't there by it.

Vardy is not challenging for the ball so it can't be serious foul play. The only thing it could be is violent conduct but it looks accidental to me.

It looks like there's a bit of afters in the Vardy incident, the movement of his leg just doesn't look natural to me. But, that's after seeing it a few times.

I don't think there's anyway to be 100% certain, and without that I dont think you could go red.

I'm not inclined to take into account whether a player has 'form'
Anyone see the Tarkowski's 'assault' in the Hammers Burnley game? The good use of VAR in the Arsenal game quickly wiped out within 24 hours

Big Cat said:

I'm not inclined to take into account whether a player has 'form'
Anyone see the Tarkowski's 'assault' in the Hammers Burnley game? The good use of VAR in the Arsenal game quickly wiped out within 24 hours

Click to expand...

just searched for it there. Ouch. Shocking that it wasn’t a sending off

Big Cat said:

I'm not inclined to take into account whether a player has 'form'
Anyone see the Tarkowski's 'assault' in the Hammers Burnley game? The good use of VAR in the Arsenal game quickly wiped out within 24 hours

Click to expand...

But again, this is wilfully misunderstanding the whole concept of what "VAR" is.

If you were talking about some kind of automated computer AI system that worked well on Tuesday and poorly on Weds then you might have a point. But you're not, you're talking about 2 different people watching camera pictures on 2 different days - why wouldn't they have different outcomes and different levels of proficiency?

We don't praise a referee on Tuesday and then when a different referee makes a mistake on Wednesday start saying "Well, that's the point of referees completely undermined, all of Tuesday referee's work completely undone" - because that would be nonsense. Why do we do that with the video assistant referee?