Sky Sports pundits clashed over whether Mohammed Kudus should face retrospective action for his sending off as West Ham lost badly at Tottenham.
The Irons star was shown red after a VAR review at the end of the 4-1 loss to Spurs on 19 October, after clashing with Micky van de Ven and then lashing out at the Dutchman and Pape Matar Sarr.
Ex-Premier League referee Mike Dean argued on Sky Sports Soccer Saturday that the latter indiscretions will bring further punishment while Kris Boyd was shocked to hear Clinton Morrison dismiss the idea.
Dean said: “Hopefully the second one the FA will then take retrospective action and he’ll get done twice in my opinion, because he’s hit two different players in the face on two occasions.”
“No he shouldn’t get done twice,” Morrison replied.
“Wow,” Boyd reacted as Dean said “he should do” and demanded to know, “Why? Why?”Morrison went on: “I don’t think he should get done. The first one it counts, but not the second one. It’s heat of the moment, I don’t think he should get done twice.”
Julen Lopetegui slips again as West Ham beaten at Tottenham
Whether he deserves to or not it would be no shock to see Kudus get an extended ban after his head-loss at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which was a worrying sign for the season as a whole.
Despite an uplifting 4-1 win over Ipswich on 5 October the Irons categorically failed to build on that to go down by the same scoreline despite Kudus himself opening the scoring.
The situation seems to be going from bad to worse for Julen Lopetegui’s stumbling new regime so being without the Ghanian star forward for multiple games will be the latest blow to add to the list.
Clearly the 24-year-old was frustrated as he took a couple of kicks at Van de Ven on the ground, but might have just got away with the initial booking he was shown by Andy Madeley if he had stopped there.Hands into the face of an opponent is nearly always treated pretty seriously, even if the contact on the Dutch defender was nowhere near enough to send him crashing back to the turf holding his face.If anything credit should go to Sarr who took a far more substantial blow to the face immediately after but decided not to ham it up and stayed on his feet.
The fact that it was that above all which saw Kudus sent off following the VAR review showed that play-acting was unnecessary when the Hammers star had already condemned himself.
There was always going to be some revisionism and second-guessing the decision to move on from David Moyes but few would have predicted Lopetegui’s reign could start so badly, and it genuinely seems in question how long this can go on for before another change is made.
