‘Has to be a mistake’ – Arne Slot doesn’t hold back on ‘comparable’ Guehi and Lacroix incidents

Arne Slot has said that one incident over the Premier League this weekend was ‘very comparable’ to one which went against Liverpool last month, with both yielding different outcomes.

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Manchester United’s 2-1 win over Crystal Palace on Sunday turned on a red card for Maxence Lacroix, who (following a VAR review) was adjudged to have committed a denial of goalscoring opportunity (DOGSO) offence on Matheus Cunha and also had a penalty given against him.

Three weeks previously, a very similar foul by Marc Guehi on Mo Salah resulted in just a yellow card for the Manchester City defender in their 2-1 win at Anfield, although that one evidently took place outside the box.

Slot says Guehi and Lacroix incidents were ‘comparable’

Slot was seething that the Englishman wasn’t sent off for a DOGSO offence on the Liverpool winger, and in his press conference on Monday morning, he referred back to that incident from February in the context of Lacroix’s red card yesterday.

The Reds head coach said (via Liverpool Echo): “They’re very comparable. The only difference is Mo was pulled back by the shirt and this was a hand on the shoulder.

“Maybe Guehi was a bigger difference to Dias in terms of distance. I watched it and thought he would never give a red card for it because of what happened against us. In both situations, the referee didn’t give a red card. In one situation the VAR overturned it, so at least one of them has to be a mistake.

“It is for me a red card [Lacroix on Cunha]. I’ve said so many times the one from Guehi was a red card as well. I wasn’t backed up by everyone and the panel said it was a correct decision afterwards.”

Slot right to call out inconsistency of outcomes

Slot is quite right to highlight the inconsistency of decision-making between two near-identical incidents which resulted in two different outcomes.

In both cases, the attacking player is impeded by the backtracking defender just outside the penalty area, and there was another centre-back coming through the middle who may or may not have gotten back in time to block a subsequent shot.

It’s borderline as to whether Lacroix’s contact on Cunha stopped before the Man United forward entered the box (whereas Guehi’s foul on Salah was definitely outside), but either both incidents equate to DOGSO offences or neither does.

Dermot Gallagher argued at the time of Man City’s win at Liverpool that the incident which enraged Slot was ‘possible’ denial of a goalscoring chance rather than an ‘obvious’ one, but said on Sky Sports this morning that the penalty and red card decisions at Old Trafford on Sunday were correct.

Quite how he can look at both of those and arrive at differing conclusions over DOGSO is hard to fathom, and we can only wonder what the Reds boss would make of the former top-flight official’s contrasting interpretations of those incidents.

There’s nothing we can do about the Guehi/Salah flashpoint now – that result has been and gone – but there’s no denying that a pertinent debate is raised by how those two moments yielded different outcomes.

Liverpool simply need to ensure that their bid for Champions League qualification isn’t left hinging on major refereeing taking points by the end of the season.

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