the Chelsea News
·14 gennaio 2025
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Yahoo sportsthe Chelsea News
·14 gennaio 2025
At the start of this entrancing match at Stamford Bridge, just 3 minutes in to the game, Marc Cucurella dropped a sneaky body check on David Brooks.
It wasn’t exactly criminal – it’s the kind of thing you see almost every game. But it was a certain yellow if the ref spots it.
The winger waited a while for his revenge – but boy did he get it. At the start of the second half, as Chelsea looked to break forward from a corner at their end, Brooks ran across Cucurella and got an arm around his neck and also managed to get a handful of the Spaniard’s curly locks as he passed.
The referee gave nothing – then was sent to the screen by the VAR because of a potential red card.
You can see the incident in the clip embedded here:
[Footage from Premier League Productions]
[Footage from TNT Sport]
Marc Cucurella is brought down by David Brooks as he tries to counter attack.
Of course, the ref decided it was a yellow not a red, despite VAR only really having called him over for one reason.
If deliberately using your hands around the neck to bring someone to ground isn’t violent conduct… what is violent conduct?
That would soon have been forgotten, but the fact that Bournemouth scored their second soon after to take the lead makes it that much more scandalous.
We will be hearing a lot more about this in the week, that’s for sure.
We really try not to go on too much about refereeing – and Chelsea certainly need to blame themselves to a large degree for today’s result. But when you have to suffer the tedium of VAR and it still can’t send a player off for a clothesline, even we can’t resist a complaint.