Mcgleish appeal turned down

Northampton Town’s official appeal against Scott McGleish’s red card, shown to him in the Nottingham Forest defeat last Saturday, has failed. It is clear the farcical appeal process isn’t supposed to clear the names of the innocent, but to protect referee’s poor decisions.

McGleish was sent off by ref Lee Probert for an alleged elbow on Julian Bennett as the Nottingham Forest defender cleared the ball up the line during the second half of the Cobblers 1-0 defeat, yet video evidence suggests that the two players merely collided. The panel obviously watched a different video to come to any other conclusion.
This is backed up by a picture on the Club’s official site, which shows no elbow raised by the Cobblers captain and the fury surrounding the challenge seemed fuelled by Bennett’s reaction – clutching his face – though strangely only requiring treatment on a leg injury.

McGleish will now miss 3 matches in August and no doubt hand his place to James Quinn. He won’t play in the trip to Gillingham this Saturday, the Carling Cup first round tie at QPR on Tuesday 22nd August and more importantly the home clash versus Bristol City on Tuesday 29th August, due to be aired live on Sky Sports. Ian Taylor and Luke Chambers will be vying for taking over the captaincy in the short term.

Gorman was understandably furious at the panel’s decision. ‘In our opinion the pictures show that the elbow was down, and the report says he was sent off for using the elbow. We feel that Scott has been hard done by.’

Website editor Simon Sidwell, who saw the whole incident, stated: ‘If the FA Panel are supposed to protect the innocent by matching what the referee says (an elbow was used) to hard video evidence (an elbow wasn’t used) and looking at their own rules (video doesn’t match the ref’s report – reverse the decision), then how can Clubs have faith in referees at all, if they cannot be accountable for their mistakes?’