bluenose45 said:
If we put aside the 'incident', the issue is: have the FA and Howard Webb caved in to media pressure? Clearly seen, within the VT evidence used to charge the player, is Webb looking at the incident and waving play on. Therefore, he's either running blind or he's changed his report. That being the case we may as well let the media run the FA. Oh, perhaps they do!
Good question.
The video footage looks reasonably damning, in slo-mo, from the right angle, but as Lee Dixon said only Mario knows whether he intended a stamp or not. So let's imagine this scenario: the FA receive Howard Webb's report. In a nutshell, he says ' I saw it out of the corner of my eye, at the time I didn't think it was anything more than an accidental collision, but having seen the replays I'm not so sure.'
The FA committee who decide on charging look at it and think 'it may have been accidental but it looks malicious in slo-mo. There's a case to answer, let Mario answer it. If he persuades us there was no malice and it was accidental, he walks. But if it was deliberate, he has to be banned.' I can understand that: or at least, I can see the logic of that.
What I don't get is this.
During the VK appeal, an interesting little statistic popped up on the FA website which was that about 99% of misconduct charges that they bring (including violent conduct) result in the charge being upheld. There are however plenty of cases where you have to make a judgment on whether an action is intended maliciously or not. That overwhelming statistic suggests to me that where there is doubt, they give the player the benefit of the doubt by the FA simply not bringing the charge: they don't in general, say 'well there's a case to answer, let the commission decide one way or the other'. They only charge where there is overwhelming evidence.
Then there is Lescott. I simply don't see how it can possibly be said that the Balotelli stamp (if it was) discloses more of a case to answer than the Lescott elbow. The evidence is no more conclusive about alotelli, and no less conclusive about Lescott. As with Balotelli, only Lescott knows whether he intended to 'do' Kaboul. Yet the FA has decided to charge Balotelli but not Lescott.
Why is this?
Two realistic possibilities occur to me (I do not consider the 'because Lescott is English' argument).
The first is that the FA have decided that they can't charge Lescott as well because (a) it looks like an anti-City witchhunt to charge for two separate incidents from the same game when you stack it up alongside Kompany's ban, the soft red cards for Barry & Balotelli previously, when compared with the lack of charges over say Rooney's elbow, Huth's elbow in the Final, Huddlestone's stamp etc, and (b) because it makes Webb look like a real twat for missing two red card incidents in the same 10 minute period.
The second is that the Balotelli thing has been all over every sports news outlet far more than than Lescott's, presumably because it is Mario, perhaps also that he scored the winning goal.
Personally, I lean towards the latter. The outcry which followed Rooney's tirade at the camera led to the charge against him (which I'm sure was nothing at all to do with Sky being angry receiving thousands of complaints from angry parents whose young kids have just witnessed Roopney's outburst) because the FA would have looked weak if they hadn't charged him: likewise Adebayor's stamp on van Persie. I don't remember the same sort of outcry over Huddlestone's stamp, I don't remember the same sort of outcry over Huth's elbow, I don't remember the same outcry over Rooney's elbow against Wigan. The ones where the media goes beserk, however, are the ones where the charge is brought.
Funny, that.
