Tottenham have been given an immediate assessment on Cristian Romero’s red card during their Premier League match against Manchester United. The defender was dismissed for a dangerous tackle on Casemiro, with several pundits including TNT Sports co-commentator Ally McCoist offering their opinions.
McCoist said: “He definitely catches studs on ankle. It does look really painful. I don’t think he needs to follow through, I think it’s ridiculous. There’s a way he can challenge for the ball and win the ball, it’s madness. He’s just letting his team-mates down again, he doesn’t need to do that.”
Paul Merson also commented on Sky Sports: “I hope this doesn’t get silly and Man Utd win four and five, and then the Tottenham fans are sitting in the pub after going ‘if everybody was like Romero we’d be alright, if everybody got stuck in.
“He’s the reason they’ll probably get beat now. He’s the reason. Unbelievable.” Shortly afterwards, United took the lead courtesy of Bryan Mbeumo.
The Premier League Match Centre later posted on X: “The referee’s call of red card to Romero for serious foul play was checked and confirmed by VAR – with it deemed that the challenge was made with excessive force and endangered an opponent.”
As this marks his second sending-off of the campaign, Romero will be handed a four-match suspension which means he’ll be absent for the north London derby against Arsenal.
He will also miss fixtures against Newcastle United, Fulham and Crystal Palace.
He wrote on Instagram: “Great effort from all my teammates yesterday ,they were incredible.
“I wanted to be available to help them even though I wasn’t feeling well, especially since we only had 11 players available – unbelievable but true and disgraceful [face palm emoji].
“We’ll keep showing up and taking responsibility to turn this around, working hard and staying together.All that’s left is to thank all of you for being there and for always supporting us ,the fans [two white heart emojis].”
“Sometimes when you are like that, sometimes there can be an outburst. It happened this time and it’s something we of course dealt with and dealt with internally.”