Burnley FC manager Sean Dyche spoke about the incident involving Chelsea FC midfielder Nemanja Matic and forward Ashley Barnes and defended his player’s tackle as accidental. The incident of course lead to Nemanja Matic receiving a red card and two match ban for his reaction but Barnes received no further punishment from the FA for his role in it.
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Dyche used two main points to defend the tackle and the player himself. He said first that Barnes made contact with the ball first and was not in the wrong. Dyche also said that Barnes’s leg was already in motion because he was looking to make a pass and Matic simply stepped in front and it was incidental contact.
“On slow mo of course it looks ugly but there was contact with the ball (from Barnes). I would suggest once you are in that pendulum motion to play a pass it is very difficult to then retract your leg immediately and stop your leg from going through that ball and rising. I must make it clear when you see it in slow mo it does not look pleasant”, said Sean Dyche as quoted in the Daily Mail.
While it was not the typical two-footed lunge tackle that we often see players sent off for, it was clearly a dangerous play by the Burnley forward. He was also not just trying to make a pass as video replays clearly showed that he lost control of the ball, lunged after it, and caught Matic dangerously high.
Sean Dyche refuses to accept that it was dangerous simply because it was unintentional? Intent means little when it comes to these sort of things and plenty of red cards and penalties have been handed out for players committing fouls or handballs unintentionally. Does Dyche think that every foul in the box is fully intentional otherwise it should not be called?
The Burnley manager went on to say that because none of the Chelsea players or Jose Mourinho reacted immediately to the tackle then it was not as bad as it may have looked. Dyche said “I find it hard to believe, however, that all these people – especially the manager – using very strong phrases didn’t have any reaction at all at that live moment. I find that a hard one to accept. We can all use slow mo, things often look different. The likes of John Terry, a real warrior and a top class professional in my opinion, Zouma, big strong boys, Ivanovic, right on top of this moment. Jose Mourinho, similar view to me, the crowd behind me, circa 15,000 fans. No one reacts. Apart from Matic.”
Well there is a simple enough explanation for that one Sean. Just as we stated earlier, this was not a two footed challenge that the referee or crowd can see from a mile away, this was a tackle that happened in a flash but that does not make it any less dangerous. As for John Terry, Kurt Zouma, and Branislav Ivanovic, they were all behind Barnes when he made the challenge and did not have a good view of it.
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Mourinho may have simply not seen how bad it was as well because of how quickly the tackle came in. Regardless of whether someone reacted to it or not, that does not and should not have any impact on the referee’s decision. The referee himself may not have seen it right away but that again highlights the need for video technology to help referees make game-changing calls. Sean Dyche seems to be talking himself out of blaming his own players when the right thing to do would have been to admit fault, say that it was a dangerous challenge, and move on.