Due to a yellow card at Tottenham that was changed to a red following VAR intervention, which Liverpool said was “inappropriate,” Curtis Jones is currently serving a three-match suspension.
Jones has played one game of his three-game suspension and won’t play at home again until the League Cup encounter against Bournemouth at the beginning of next month.
Referee Simon Hooper was instructed to review the pitch-side monitor after his challenge on Tottenham’s Yves Bissouma resulted in a yellow card being changed to a red one.
Liverpool then filed an appeal after Hooper was immediately given a freeze frame of the worst conceivable angle of Jones’ challenge.
The FA indicated that the club’s defence included two parts.
The club said that Jones’ red should be overturned because the referee made a “obvious error,” and that the three-game suspension is “clearly excessive.”
The committee presiding over the case was “unanimous in deciding the player clearly endangered the safety of his opponent” and that the referee “had not made a clear and obvious error.”
However, Liverpool and the Reds supporters felt that the use of VAR had flaws, claiming that it “was not appropriate” and “has pushed the referee to arrive at a decision which he should not have.”
In defending the first on-field decision to issue a yellow card, Liverpool insisted that there was “no ‘clear and obvious error'” and emphasised that the technology is “not intended to re-referee” the game.
The tribunal “acknowledged” the Liverpool’s contention that a three-game suspension was a harsh punishment, but it was not surprised that they continued with the case despite this.
Jones made “a genuine attempt to get the ball fairly,” Bissouma wasn’t hurt, and the club and player had already “suffered a significant impact” after playing for more than 70 minutes with 10 men and losing the game, according to Liverpool.
This was also denied because “no truly exceptional circumstances existed within this case”; nonetheless, many supporters will criticise the inconsistent application of the rule after witnessing Mateo Kovacic of Man City avoid a red card for a challenge harsher than Jones’.
According to Jones’ account of the situation, “my sole intention was to touch the ball away from my opponent and into the path of my teammate, Luis Diaz, who I could see to my left hand side, according to his statement.
“Since I believed I had possession of the ball and was attempting to transfer it away from my opponent’s grasp, I did not see myself as challenging them for possession.”