Arne Slot is adamant Tottenham Hotspur teenager Lucas Bergvall shouldn’t have been on the field to score the goal
Bergvall struck four minutes from time as the Reds were beaten 1-0 in their League Cup semi-final second leg in North London
Moments earlier the midfielder had been fortunate to escape a second yellow card and subsequent red when challenging Kostas Tsimikas.
The decision of referee Stuart Attwell was compounded by Tsimikas still being off the pitch after receiving treatment when Bergvall scored his winner.
when asked whether the Tottenham man should have been shown a second caution,
Slot said:
“Yes, I don’t think there’s any debate about that.
“They say he (the referee) didn’t (want to) stop the counter-attack and I say every manager would prefer when a tackle being made 40 yards from our goalkeeper, that the player is given a second yellow card rather than to continue the counter-attack with a player less to play that counter-attack with.
“The next discussion is was it reckless enough to give advantage and come back and say the tackle was still too reckless and then give a yellow.
“When he (the referee) didn’t give the second yellow nobody thought it would have such a big impact 30 seconds later.
“I haven’t asked him, but I’m 99.9% sure I wasn’t the only one who felt ‘wow, not the best’. I’m 99.9% sure when Bergvall scored the referee thought ‘oh, is this really happening?’ because he couldn’t change it anymore.
“I think for him it was also far from ideal.”
“In the offside decision he had to tell everyone what the decision was and unfortunately he didn’t have to do that with this decision.”
Slot was referring to Attwell informing the stadium over the public address system of the decision earlier in the game to disallow a Dominic Solanke goal for offside, an initiative being trialled in the semi-finals.
“You can’t judge something on one game, but if it’s offside I don’t think you have to explain it,”
“It would be more interesting for everyone if he would have explained why he didn’t give a second yellow card than explaining why he cancelled a goal everyone could see on the screen.
“But I know that’s not the rule. The VAR wasn’t involved in the second yellow.”
Slot added: “It was a good goal, let that be clear. Ball in behind, cutback cross and Bergvall stayed really calm to finish it off.
“I think I saw (Tottenham boss) Ange (Postecoglu) sitting here on Saturday and something happened and Spurs weren’t happy with a few decision that were made (in a 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United).
“Many people say these things will eventually match up in a season. I’m not one who believes that as sometimes you can be unlucky or lucky in a season.
“On Saturday a decision went against them and maybe today a decision went in favour of them. Which is of course very unlucky for us.”
“If you go down to 10 for a few seconds against a team that can play good football like Tottenham can, it’s far from ideal.”
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