Gary O’Neil believes Brentford could have been given two red cards

Posted Saturday, January 06, 2024 by PA

Gary O’Neil had no complaints with Joao Gomes’ red card at Brentford but he felt the Bees should have had two players sent off.

A rocket from Tommy Doyle kept Wolves in the FA Cup despite playing with 10 men for 81 minutes at Brentford.

They were trailing to Neal Maupay’s first-half goal when Doyle struck from 20 yards to secure a 1-1 draw.

In a niggly encounter, Gomes was given his marching orders for chopping down Bees captain Christian Norgaard.

But O’Neil pointed to a similar challenge from Mikkel Damsgaard on Doyle which went unpunished.

The Wolves boss also felt Keane Lewis-Potter should have been sent off for grabbing Nelson Semedo in a stoppage-time melee.

“Obviously I know Joao very well. It would look bad slowed down, it’s a nasty place to be kicked with the studs and I hope Norgaard is OK,” said O’Neil.

“But I know Joao has not meant for it to land like that. He’s a bit late. I’ve got no real complaints, it could have been a yellow, it could have been a red.

“But the tackle on Tommy Doyle was equally as bad, a straight leg on Tommy. And Lewis-Potter grabbing Semedo’s throat should have been a red card.

“I can’t believe VAR thought it wasn’t. Now we’ll miss one of our best midfielders for three games and one of our rivals get to keep two of theirs.”

Nevertheless, O’Neil hailed his players for battling back to secure a replay.

“I’m really pleased with performance of the players,” he added. “We played 90-odd minutes with 10 men, with the stoppage time at the end of each half.

“Away from home, going 1-0 down, it would have been easy for the players to let this one go. There was none of that. Everyone gave absolutely everything.”

Bees boss Thomas Frank felt his side had let a chance to progress at the first time of asking slip through their grasp.

“We can only blame ourselves today, there was a lack of quality all over the pitch,” he said.

“Sometimes you can’t always hit a top performance. Sometimes it’s not easy to play 11 against 10. It’s not a miracle by Wolves, although credit to them. But especially after being 1-0 we really should win the game.”

Frank had said before the match that he does not believe there should be replays in the FA Cup.

He added: “This is the worst outcome, in every aspect. I don’t understand why we have a replay.

“I simply don’t understand why no one in the football world has changed this. They need to take some more clever decisions.”