Hatters duo thought Cardiff defender should have seen red over penalty incident

Town boss Jack Wilshere admitted he was expecting a red card to be shown to Cardiff City defender Joel Bagan after he conceded a penalty against the Hatters during their 3-1 defeat in Wales yesterday.

With the visitors trailing 1-0 to David Turnbull’s early goal, the Hatters picked the ball up in midfield as new signing Devante Cole played a wonderful sliderule pass that dissected the home side’s defence and saw the recalled Izzy Jones get on the wrong side of Bagan. Into the box and about to shoot, the former Republic of Ireland U21 international then slid in to bring down Luton’s winger, with referee Ollie Yates taking a few seconds to think about it before giving the penalty and dishing out a yellow card to the defender.

Wilshere, his entire coaching staff and substitutes, were up off seats in the dug-out, insisting it should have been an even greater punishment for the full back, as was Jones, who was also cautioned by the official for his overly vociferous complaints that he hadn’t been dismissed. On why Bagan stayed on, the FA ruling on such an incident states: ‘Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offender is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball or a challenge for the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling, pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.), the offending player must be sent off.’

Although skipper Jordan Clark confidently tucked the penalty home, beating Nathan Trott with a fine effort into the side-netting, Wilshere still felt that the Bluebirds should have been down to 10 men regardless, questioning whether it was a genuine attempt to play the ball, saying: “I did, but then the ref said to me that the rules changed and that’s subjective in my opinion. Because I’ve been a player in certain moments where you know that you can’t get the ball and you just try and make a foul, so I’m frustrated, but we still have to do more.”

With Town back on level terms, the visitors didn’t make the most of the equaliser, trailing 3-1 at the break, Joel Colwill and Perry Ng scoring with five minutes of each other to give Cardiff an advantage they never looked like letting slip after the interval. Bagan himself could count himselt fortunate to stay on, has he clipped Jake Richards when the midfielder was looking to make a break forward early in the second period, before quickly picking up a mystery injury and being replaced by home boss Brian Barry-Murphy.

Going back to the incident, Jones was another who definitely felt it should have warranted been more punishment, adding: “I was expecting a red card and then he told me about some new rule that I didn’t know about. I’m not going to talk about the referee, but apparently you can’t give a red card, so it is what it is. It was nice to win the penalty, but a disappointing day overall.”