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Reserves
As much as I was baying for a penalty on the day, I can see the logic of the injury time penalty/freekick decision.Interesting it was for a trip and also Gallagher said there should be more transparency for those watching in the stadium for why a decision was made.
I haven't seen a replay of the earlier Christie collision in the box, for which he got booked for diving. In real time, that looked like a penalty, albeit that Christie was looking for the contact.
On consistency, Kerkez went over in the first half looking for a penalty when there was no contact at all and yet he wasn't booked. How does that work?
In the stadium, I was adamant that Solanke was fouled in the build up to the first United goal Having seen the replay, it was a good tackle and the sort that 10 years ago, no one would have batted an eyelid at. These days, sometimes you see them given and sometimes you don't. I can give the ref a pass on that one, begrudgingly.
The worst of the lot for me is the penalty against Smith. If that truly is a handball according to the laws of the game, then the law is an ass. The ball was travelling at speed, took a massive deflection, and all Smith really did was open his chest to turn as the ball went in a different direction to the one in which he was running.
I heard a few of the pundits saying that his arm moved and followed the ball but, if it did, it was minimal. When the ball hit, Smithy's arm was still very close to his side - it really wasn't making him bigger or in an unnatural position (they're probably terms from the 'old' version of the law, as they seem to change it nearly every season these days).