Joey Barton to face more FA punishment?
Posted on December 12th, 2010 | 53 Comments |
The Express claims that The FA are awaiting the match report from referee Lee Mason before deciding if any more action is taken.
If Lee Mason saw the incident, which is highly unlikely as he missed a hell of a lot of other stuff during the game yesterday, and mentioned it in his match report then Barton will be fine. However, if Mason missed the incident, which is entirely probable, then that could open the door for The FA ta take retrospective action against yesterday’s Man-of-the-Match.
I can only assume that this “obscene gesture” is referring to when Barton grabbed his testicles and hinted that Fernando Torres didn’t have any. If that is the case then The FA are clearly taking the piss with Newcastle.
I didn’t buy into all the vendetta stuff when Mike Williamson and Joey Barton faced retrospective punishment earlier in the season, but I do think that this is particularly pedantic if there is any truth to it. Perhaps Sepp Blatter does have a point about The FA after all?
Anyway, an FA spokesman tried to explain what happens now;
“Essentially what will happen for an incident like that is that the FA will wait for the referee’s report and if the referee includes something about incident and that he had seen it but it hadn’t warranted a caution then he may not get sanctioned at all.”
“The disciplinary people will sit down and if they need to get video evidence they will do. If there is other video evidence suggesting that he did break the rules then there is a chance that an investigation might take place.”
I haven’t seen enough of the incident to really judge, but from what I saw Joey Barton played on as he didn’t realise that there was a Liverpool player down injured. The game was stopped, so Joey stopped and was confronted by four or five Liverpool players.
I distinctly remember the commentator pointing out that Fernando Torres had offered Barton the opportunity to sort it out in the tunnel at the end of the match, to which I can only assume that Wor Joey replied by intimating that Torres didn’t have the balls to do that.
We’ll have to see what happens with this one, but it really would be a kick in the teeth if Barton was pulled up for something as petty as this.
Mind you, it also wouldn’t surprise me!
Petty isn’t even the word Toonsy. I like you, wouldn’t be surprised if he was done again though. No one can handle him getting his head down and putting in some brilliant performances even though everyone claims that’s all they want him to do. It’s pathetic if he’s punished by the FA for something like this. I’d say the club should complain but thats seemingly what is leading the FA to punish us as a club or individuals for nowt in the first place.
If he is done I expect to see players being punished for reactions to refereeing decisions, one on one confrontations, goal celebrations and more in the weeks to come. Fat F*cking chance.