Steve Cooper claims referee 'enjoyed' showing yellow card to hand Leicester City manager a ban
Steve Cooper looks set to be banned from the touchline for Leicester City’s Premier League clash at Ipswich after collecting his third booking of the season at Manchester United.
Cooper’s remonstrations over a possible offside in the build-up to United’s second goal of their 5-2 Carabao Cup victory over City saw referee Andrew Madley show him a yellow card, which the manager claims the official “enjoyed” doing. Three cautions should mean Cooper will be in the stands at Portman Road on Saturday afternoon.
Diogo Dalot did look to be in an offside position in the build-up to Alejandro Garnacho’s finish, but with no VAR to be certain he was, the goal stood. Cooper raged on the touchline and was punished for it.
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When Cooper’s suspension was mentioned at his post-match press conference, he said: “Cheers. Not to you, but to that. Maybe there’s a bit of sympathy for the linesman. He’s a Premier League linesman and he’s used to the protection of VAR. But he can’t make a mistake like that.
“It was a big moment in the game. We score soon after and it should be 1-1. It’s 2-1. The referee’s enjoyed giving me a yellow card as well. He looked like he had a good time tonight. That was that. But I want to stand up for my team. You can’t just see an image on the bench and just accept it.”
The goal came midway through a mad first half that finished 4-2 to United. While City put together lots of threatening passages of play and produced some of their best football of the season, they left themselves wide open at the back.
Cooper said: “Anybody that wasn’t here tonight will see the scoreline and think it was a dominant, straightforward, comfortable result for United. But it was everything but that. Okay, it was 5-2, and we conceded five goals, but there were circumstances around each goal.
“It was a brilliant strike from Casemiro, a really poor linesman’s decision for the second goal. The third and fourth were ricochets that haven’t gone where we wanted them to go, and we have to take responsibility that we could have done better on that as well. And then a giveaway for the fifth goal.
“In terms of how the game went… it was typified by the start of the second half to the fifth goal. We were completely dominant. I don’t think United entered our half and then we give away a goal like we did.
“It wasn’t quite the atmosphere we were expecting. We did talk about how there might be something different in the air tonight, but it wasn’t an absolutely fully-blown atmosphere. It was quite calm. That was a lot on the possession and the territory we had. But what we’ve done is hand United too many moments to cause damage. That’s something we have to take responsibility for.
“It’s strange to analyse. We’ll own the result and some of the goals. But in terms of the general game, I looked at some of the guys in the dressing room and thought: ‘You’ve done alright tonight.’ It’s turned into frustration and anger really but we need to turn it into motivation for the weekend.”