Leeds United appear to suggest Jurgen Klopp influenced Pascal Struijk red
Leeds United appear to have tried to use Jurgen Klopp’s reaction to Harvey Elliott’s injury in their appeal against Pascal Struijk’s red card.
After it was confirmed on Wednesday that Leeds lost their appeal against the 22-year-old’s three-match ban for his challenge on Elliott, the FA released their findings on their official website.
Leeds sent in four video clips to try and show how Struijk’s challenge wasn’t worthy of a red card but one of the video clips interestingly focused on Liverpool’s manager.
The FA’s document says: “In support of its claim the Club submitted four video clips of the incident that showed the incident from numerous angles and distances both at normal speed and in slow motion.
“One of the videos focused on the reactions and behaviour of the Liverpool Manager, Jurgen Klopp following the incident in question.
“The videos were accompanied by a letter dated 14th September 2021 signed by Mr. Angus Kinnear, the Club’s Chief Executive, for and behalf of the Club.”
What are Leeds suggesting?
Leeds seem to feel as though Klopp’s reaction played a role in Craig Pawson changing his mind and sending Struijk off.
Pawson saw the challenge in real-time and didn’t even stop play for a foul.
He didn’t look again at the pitch-side monitor either – he basically sent Struijk off just because of the injury that Elliott suffered.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a freak accident.
Yet Struijk has been punished.
Did Klopp influence Pawson’s decision?
Speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post, ex-referee Keith Hackett spoke about how Klopp and Pawson were seeing speaking to each other after the incident.
“It wasn’t a good selling process; it left some elements of doubt,” said Hackett.
Elliott has come out and said it should not have been a sending off and that seems to be the overwhelming feeling among football fans.
The FA have dropped a clanger here.
In other Leeds United news, Liam Cooper had reacted to Struijk’s ban being upheld.