Marco Silva embarrassingly blames match officials for hammering by Newcastle United | OneFootball

Marco Silva wasn’t a happy man on Saturday afternoon.

His team losing 4-1 and to be honest, Fulham were VERY lucky to only lose by three.

They scored with their only effort on target and that came courtesy of shocking defending from sub Jamal Lewis.

Whilst Newcastle United could have quite easily got very close to double figures if more clinical, both Callum Wilson and Miguel Almiron left wondering if they should have walked away with the match ball.

I think Marco Silva should have been looking closer to home when it came to this heavy home defeat but instead it was the match officials the Fulham boss was embarrassingly pointing the finger at…

Marco Silva after the final whistle, asked if the Nathaniel Chalobah sending off on eight minutes meant it was already game over at that early point in the contest :

“Of course (it was), it is clear we had a game until the sixth or eighth minute and after that we had a completely different game.

“I think that is normal when we get the red card so early in the game.

“And talking about the red card, harsh tackle from Nathaniel in that moment.

“The referee was on it and it was clear for him a yellow card, he told me even. And, of course, the [VAR] decision changed everything completely.

“Such a long time to take one decision like that, and to advise the referee, for me was strange.

“Of course it was a harsh tackle, but the problem that we have is I haven’t seen consistently these type of situations, which makes the afternoon look strange for us because I’m 100 per cent sure the next few weeks we will see some really tough and competitive matches.

“We’ll see more tackles like that one and it will be a yellow card and the VAR will decide that we will keep going.

“That is tough for us to understand because we are not seeing, consistently, these type of decisions and it makes me and the players not understand what is consistent with these type of decisions.”

The way I look at it, what would Marco Silva have said if it had been the other way around, if say Longstaff had lunged in like that on Chalobah?

Never in a million years would he be saying that Sean Longstaff should stay on the pitch.

Whether the red card was arrived at by the match referee instantly, or after VAR gets involved, is irrelevant.

The only question is, was it a red card offence? The answer to that is clearly YES. Sean Longstaff very lucky to not be seriously injured, Chalobah so reckless.

Indeed, this is exactly the kind of incident that sees VAR playing the role intended.

In the split second the referee not really seeing the true nature of the challenge, whereas on the TV replay you can clearly see how bad it is.

Marco Silva should only be looking at Chalobah when it comes to who to blame, putting in such a dangerous challenge, especially so early in the match and in a non-threatening area of the pitch.

Stats from BBC Sport:

Fulham 1 Newcastle 4 – Saturday 1 October 3pm

Goals:

Newcastle:

Wilson 11, Almiron 33, 57, Longstaff 43

Fulham:

Chalobah red card 8, De Cordova-Reid 88

(Half-time stats in brackets)

Possession was Fulham 31% (24%) Newcastle 69% (76%)

Total shots were Fulham 4 (0) Newcastle 19 (13)

Shots on target were Fulham 1 (0) Newcastle 10 (7)

Corners were Fulham 1 (0) Newcastle 8 (4)

Referee: Darren England

Attendance: 22,913 (2,300 Newcastle)

Newcastle United:

Pope, Trippier (Lewis 83), Schar (Lascelles 83), Botman, Burn (Targett 83), Longstaff, Bruno (Anderson 59), Willock, Murphy, Almiron, Wilson (Fraser 66)

Unused Subs:

Karius, Dummett, Joelinton, Wood