Man United Vs Leeds - Hair Pulling

[deusex]

I really am unsure what the debate is about?

First action - normal and a footballing action jumping for the ball.
Second movement - yanks the hair.

Sorry, but I can't see anything other than a red.

If, however, it was all one action and chance involved, I could see why it's could be debatable.

I've yet to see any yanking of the hair in the 20 times I've watched the replay.
If this is VC then so is DCL's grab around the neck (not a RC either) and we'll have two red cards then.

A 3 match ban. Same as a headbutt or punch in the face. Pretty hard to compare.

 

[JamesL]

In most cases pulling someone hair is a savage act. I haven't seen this incident so I can't say for sure it it meets the threshold to be considered savage but I don't think we need a great deal of force before we arrive at the point of calling it violent conduct.

 

[one]

While I think hair pulling has to be a red, I can see the other side of the argument on the mild cases. You can never win with subjective decisions. When Romero pulled Cucurella's hair a few years back with no red card there was uproar. There was also a lot of noise for for VAR not intervening as it was deemed a clear an obvious red. Dammed if you do Dammed if you don't. And making it a sliding scale is just going to cause more problems (we will get to handball later). Players know, if you deliberately pull an opponent's hair you get an early shower. Just don't do it.

I don't buy the instinctive or he was going for the shirt argument. If a defender instinctively leans towards the ball to stop it from going into goal, if the ball hits the hand and it is away from the body, even if he was meant to chest it, it's a red.

We can make the hair pull similar to handball with all different conditions and still not get it right, or we can make it simple, players understand it and act at their own peril.