The Manchester United manager on trial was furious at referee Paul Tierney after the defeat to Leeds United at Old Trafford, but he should have placed the blame on someone closer to him.
Michael Carrick has made highly critical comments about the refereeing in his team’s loss to Leeds United (Image: Carl Recine, Getty Images)
Arguably, Lisandro Martinez’s hair-pulling was even less violent than the sending off of Everton’s Michael Keane against Wolves at the Hill-Dickinson Stadium in January. But from the moment Keane’s “infraction” on Wolves’ Tolu Arokodere was deemed worthy of a straight red card and a three-match ban, it was clear Premier League referees had been given the word.
No tweezing is allowed. You can pull it, pull it, whatever. And no matter how much Michael Carrick and a number of former professional players profess their disbelief, there will be no change in policy. Certainly not this season.
If you pull your hair, you will be sent off. And no matter how benign Martinez’s firing may seem, you can’t accidentally pull someone’s hair.
Whether this zero-tolerance approach will continue next season is another question, but the question for referees is deciding when hair-pulling is soft enough to warrant a yellow card or penalty, and when it’s severe enough to award a red card. To put it more simply: “Please stop pulling people’s hair.”
Anyway, the point is that while the red card for Martinez looked very harsh, it wasn’t “absolutely shocking”. If Paul Tierney believes there is even a slight tug on the footage, the Manchester United man will be sent off.
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But what was shocking was Carrick’s reaction after the game. It was his first major failure in a lengthy audition for a long-term job.
It’s not shocking that he was furious about this decision, and many others were as well. It’s safe to say this was pretty low on the list of offenses deemed worthy of sanction since Martinez’s time in the Premier League.
But Carrick had just enjoyed the luxury of three weeks to prepare for a match against a team that had won just one away game in the Premier League all season. And that win came against a Wolves team that was the unluckiest early in the season.
And let’s not forget, Carrick is building a team that has cost in excess of £800m. The total cost for Daniel Farke’s team was just over £200m. Most pertinently, Leeds United had a two-goal lead at the time of Martinez’s attack and appeared to be in relatively little danger.
Lisandro Martinez was stunned by Paul Tierney’s decision to send off Leeds United’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin for hair-pulling (Image: Getty Images)
I can understand the manager’s frustration. He will be without Martinez for the next three games, but it would be fair to describe the Argentine’s return performance as mixed, even before the red card.
But even if that was not his intention, Carrick’s broadside to officials was a distraction from the most unsatisfactory performance of what was essentially a trial period for the manager, and the message from Carrick should have been clear. He did not agree with the red card, but the real problem was that United’s players had fallen to pre-Carrick levels of performance, and that is something he will address.
They are seven points behind sixth-placed Chelsea (the top five qualify for the Champions League) with six Premier League games remaining, but Carrick is still in the box seat in a long-term role. But Monday night’s effort, and the subsequent groans against officials, were the kind that could very dramatically change executives’ opinion of Carrick.
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