You would think that common sense would prevail at all times, but this is football so it’s hard to be overly surprised at any decisions the FA take these days.
It’s understandable that they will feel the need to stand by their referees and back their decisions if it’s a borderline one, but everyone has been queuing up in recent days to bemoan the decision to send off David Luiz.
He did deny a clear goalscoring opportunity against Wolves but it looked accidental and there was clearly nothing malicious about his challenge, so you would think that Arsenal’s decision to appeal the decision would be successful.
Unfortunately the inevitable has happened, and the FA will be standing by the decision:
It will inevitably lead to a farce again in a few weeks as referees won’t want to make the same decision if it happens again because of the outcry, but they’ll then be accused of lacking consistency because the FA have decided to set this precedent.
There were suggestions that he could face a longer ban if the appeal was ruled as frivolous but there’s no mention of that here, so we have to assume it’s just a one game ban for now.