Roy Keane believes that one player was fortunate to avoid a red card in the first half between Southampton and Liverpool this afternoon.
The teams went in level at the interval after a feisty first half at St Mary’s, with Jamie Carragher lamenting a risky challenge from Ibrahima Konate in the early exchanges before the Saints were later awarded a penalty for a foul by Andy Robertson on Tyler Dibling after a lengthy VAR review.
Aside from those incidents, Adam Lallana was shown a yellow card in the 23rd minute when he caught Ryan Gravenberch above the boot with a late challenge.
Speaking at half-time on punditry duty for Sky Sports, Keane claimed that the former Liverpool midfielder was lucky not to have been sent off for that lunge.
The ex-Manchester United captain said of Lallana: “He’s not in control; he’s not even looking at the ball. They’ve looked at the character of the player; he’s not really a nasty type. Southampton have got away with one there. The more I look at it, the worse it gets.”
In an ironic twist, it was actually the Saints’ number 10 who went off injured before half-time, rather than Gravenberch, with the 36-year-old suffering a suspected hamstring problem which ended his match prematurely.
Nonetheless, the question as to whether he should still have been on the pitch at that point is a fair one. It wasn’t a malicious challenge from Lallana, but the contact on the Liverpool midfielder was strong, and another group of officials may have viewed it differently to Sam Barrott and co.
We don’t want to see red cards being handed out unless necessary, and our admiration for the former Red for his contributions during the Jurgen Klopp era at Anfield will never diminish, but we agree with Keane when he says that the perpetrator may have dodged a bullet on this occasion.
Alas, Lallana’s afternoon ended shortly afterwards, and hopefully he can recover quickly from the injury which forced him off today.
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