The FA have decided to charge Neil Warnock with ‘improper conduct’ over his perfectly justified comments about Mark Halsey’s atrocious decision to dismiss Luke Varney at Millwall on Sunday.
One of the pleasures of having Neil Warnock managing our club is that he tells it how it is, and I love it when he has a good moan whenever a major decision goes against us. And if that gets up other people’s noses then so much the better.
After the game Halsey refused to allow Warnock to go and see him after the game (which is supposedly the correct manner to raise any grievances about the referee’s performance) leaving Warnock no option but to put his points across to Halsey via the media. These were our manager’s comments after the game:-
“'The amount of effort that's gone into the game and we're talking about a refereeing decision - it's scandalous. When you watch the sending-off again, we don't have thousands of Millwall fans screaming at us. It's not caught him where he's holding when he's gone down. Referees aren't as consistent - they've gone backwards, I think. I didn't think someone of Mark Halsey's quality and experience would have gone straight for his red card, and I think he'll be disappointed when he sees it, but that will do us no good”.
Actually when I first heard Warnock’s post-match interview on Sky I thought that the old boy had gone a bit soft, as he could have been a lot harsher than that. The sending off came when Varney backed into Adam Smith as he tried to get on the end of a ball that was being played down the line, and caught him with his arm. It certainly wasn’t a swing of the elbow, yet Smith rolled around on the floor as if he’d just been shot.
I’m disappointed that the club haven’t made an appeal over the sending off. Maybe they think that would risk having the ban extended by one game, yet I don’t see how anyone could look at the video of the incident and say that an appeal against a three game ban was frivolous.
For what it’s worth, a statement on the FA's website says “'Leeds United manager Neil Warnock has been charged by the FA for an alleged breach of Rule E3. The charge is in relation to improper conduct following his side's game at Millwall on 18 November 2012.” Warnock has until 4pm on Friday to respond to the charge (which no doubt he will).