Michael Keane, the player who earlier this season witnessed his Everton team-mate Idrissa Gueye receive a red card for slapping him at Manchester United, experienced an even more bizarre dismissal as he was sent off for pulling an opponent’s hair against Wolves. Keane’s evening had begun on a high note as he scored an instinctive goal, his third of the season, to put the Blues in the lead against the Premier League’s bottom club. However, Wolves arrived fresh from their first win of the season and secured an equaliser through Matheus Mane.<\/p>\n
And things got worse for Everton as they saw two players dismissed on their way to a frustrating home draw. Most spectators at Hill Dickinson Stadium, including referee Thomas Kirk, officiating only his second Premier League match, failed to notice Keane’s offence during an aerial duel with Tolu Arokodare.<\/p>\n
However, over 200 miles away at Stockley Park, Chris Kavanagh, on VAR duty, spotted the incident and directed Kirk to his pitchside monitor. Keane, seen mouthing ‘oh my God,’ as the footage replayed, was promptly dismissed for what was deemed ‘violent conduct.’<\/p>\n
However, if it was a deliberate act, then it was reckless. The same applies to Jack Grealish, who followed Keane off the pitch due to two rapid yellow cards, leaving David Moyes’ team to desperately hold on for a draw with only nine players.<\/p>\n
Furious Everton boss Moyes said the decision to give Keane a red card was \u2018ridiculous\u2019. He said: “It is not violent, it is not forceful and it is not deliberate. So, all of those things I have said mean it shouldn\u2019t have been a red card.<\/p>\n
“I think it was a really poor decision to send him to the screen in the first place. (Marc) Cucurella got his hair pulled – violent conduct, a deliberate action, no problem with that. But this was in the game, on a ball coming up, and unless you have played the game, you might not understand.<\/p>\n
“I have been a centre-half and there is no way I am jumping to out-jump a big centre forward and think… \u2018oh, by the way, I am going to out-jump him and, at the same time, I am going to pull his hair.\u2019<\/p>\n
“I don’t know anyone on the planet who is good enough to think that way when they are jumping up. I thought it was a ridiculous decision by the referee but more by VAR. I thought the ridiculous bit came from VAR.<\/p>\n
“If anyone grows their hair a bit longer, they have a chance of getting it pulled. Crazy. It was a ridiculous decision. Everybody was frustrated, everybody could not believe it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Keane, the player who earlier this season witnessed his Everton team-mate Idrissa Gueye receive a red card…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[8142,18,8255,8145,19,17,110091,138943,132,138944,138942],"class_list":{"0":"post-273541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-david-moyes","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-everton","11":"tag-everton-fc","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-michael-keane","15":"tag-red-card","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-var-decision","18":"tag-wolves-fc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115857807321182551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}