Liam Cooper is outraged after Fabian Balbuena was red carded for making a clearance v Chelsea
Leeds United captain Liam Cooper was appalled with Fabian Balbuena’s sending off as West Ham lost to Chelsea on Saturday.
The Hammers defender was red-carded after clearing the ball as his follow-through caught Ben Chilwell on the calf.
Cooper was dismissed for a similar challenge against Manchester City earlier this month, as he made contact with the ball before connecting with Gabriel Jesus’ leg.
And the skipper took to Twitter to voice his outrage on Saturday evening, saying, “I tell you what, scrap tackling because every single week something is getting slowed down to make it look 100% worse.
“Chilwell has the right to go down as it’s a sore one. But that’s it! Red card? Never in a million years.”
Cooper fumes
Cooper was understandably angered by the referee sending off Balbuena and it no doubt reminded him of his own unfair dismissal against Man City.
On that occasion the defender made a solid challenge and won the ball, and like Balbuena he could not help that his foot caught the opponent.
It is time referees showed some common sense as they seem to fail to understand what it means to play the game.
Cooper’s tongue in cheek call to scrap tackling has truth behind it, but it is VAR that is the enemy.
Slowing things down makes every challenge or handball look worse and it is unsurprising that the refs get that impression after watching replays on the TV monitor.
Getting rid of VAR would be the first step to rectifying these terrible decisions, but it is time the officials started listening to the players and ex-players too.
In other Leeds United news, Jeff Stelling tore into a Sky Sports pundit after his Leeds and Bielsa claim.