Lucasz Fabianski was sent off during yesterday's 3-1 defeat of Swansea to the consternation of Swans boss Garry Monk.
KUMB's Gordon Thrower took a closer look at the incident to determine the rights and wrongs - and establishes whether or not the goalkeeper's dismissal was a correct decision...The key issue for me at the time was the matter of when Foy blew for the foul. Had he allowed play to continue to see what happened to Sakho’s shot he should then have allowed play to continue after it had hit the post, cautioning Fabianski as soon as there was a break in play.
It looked at the time as if Foy might have allowed play to continue until the ball had hit the post then pulled it back to dismiss Fabianski . This would have been wrong since the sending off offence is for “Denial of Obvious Goalscoring Opportunity” (or “DOGSO” as it’s known in refereeing circles).
Since Sakho went on to get a shot in, the obvious goalscoring opportunity was not denied – Sakho simply failed to take full advantage of it. My thought that was Foy must have blown up early as that would have been a pretty basic error to have made – even by the poor standards of refereeing that seem to be the norm these days.
On seeing it again in the press room after the match my suspicions were confirmed – the replay shows that Foy blows up the instant Fabianski clatters into Sakho. Anything that happened after that point was therefore completely irrelevant to the dismissal.
That leaves us with what Foy actually saw up to the point that the whistle was blown. It looked for all the world as if Fabianski had impeded Sakho and the challenge satisfied all the criteria required for a DOGSO dismissal “the 4 Ds”– direction: the player was running towards goal, distance to the ball: the ball was close enough for him to reach, distance to goal: not too far out and Defenders: there weren’t any covering behind Fabianski at the time of the foul.
So based on what Foy could see, the decision was correct.
Fabianski’s likely appeal will therefore hinge on Foy’s viewing of the replay and his comments on what decision he would have made had he had a different view. The two elements here are Williams’ shove on Sakho and the subsequent “handball by Sakho”.
If Foy didn’t see the shove he could concede that he would have awarded that foul first had he seen it and therefore wouldn’t have dismissed Fabianski – at worst giving a caution for the slightly dangerous way in which he jumped at the player.
Alternatively, Foy might say that the shove by Williams wasn’t a foul but that he’d have given a free-kick against Sakho for handball. In my opinion the handball came about because of the shove but playing devil’s advocate this would give Fabianski a second appeal route.
Foy’s not too bad a ref – you never get the impression that he has one eye on making a “look at me” decision and any errors he makes look to be honest ones (unlike far too many of his select group colleagues).
I think the biggest error he made in the whole incident was being a shade too quick to blow as, by doing so, he left himself with no option but to send the ‘keeper off where as a slight delay would have given him more room for manoeuvre.
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