Thomas Tuchel was booked for his animated protestations after Cristiano Ronaldo was allowed to play on despite clearly being offside in Chelsea’s draw with Manchester United
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Chelsea v Manchester United: Match in Pictures
Thomas Tuchel was shown a yellow card as Chelsea drew 1-1 with Manchester United on Sunday – and it was little surprise why the Blues boss was left irate.
Tuchel was booked by referee Anthony Taylor after becoming enraged that Cristiano Ronaldo was allowed to play on and earn the Red Devils a corner in the dying embers of the one-sided match.
Ronaldo had clearly began his run in an offside position but rules state that assistant referees in the top flight must keep their flags down until the ball has gone out of play and allow VAR to intervene afterwards if anything significant occurs.
The assistant did just that – but then didn’t flag for offside either.
Tuchel was animated on the touchline and upon seeing play continue went into a full-on rage, leading to Taylor booking him.
But the Chelsea manager received backing from multiple pundits, given the nature of what many feel is an unfair FIFA ruling.
Join the debate! Was Tuchel unfairly booked? Comment your thoughts here.
Former England international Karen Carney said on BBC Radio 5 Live: “Wow, I though I saw Thomas Tuchel animated before but he’s absolutely livid here – Cristiano Ronaldo was miles offside. It’s not even close.”
Meanwhile, former Liverpool midfielder and Mirror Football columnist Stan Collymore blasted the FA ‘s rule book, tweeting an extract from their laws of the game.
It read: “Advantage allows play to continue when an offence occurs and the non-offending team will benefit from the advantage and penalises the offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue at that time or within a few seconds.”
Collymore captioned the extract with: “If there’s a foul, blow the whistle. If there’s an offside, raise the flag.
“There should only ever be one situation where the above should be ignored, where an advantage is given.
“Yet more fixing things that were never broken.”
One fan tweeted: “That offside decision that led to the United corner and also a Tuchel booking shows a huge flaw in the VAR/ Offside rule, that needs fixing ASAP.
“We may as well get rid of linesmen.”
Another added: “Absolute nonsense from the referees.
“They mess up, United could’ve scored from the corner and Tuchel gets the booking for being rightly unhappy.”
However, a less sympathetic viewer believes Tuchel was rightly punished.
“Awful descition to not call it offside, and I understand Tuchel’s frustration, but that doesn’t give him right to yell at the fourth official like that,” they tweeted.
Have your say! How did Chelsea fare against Man Utd? Rate the players below.
“The yellow card was right.”
Tuchel himself believes his team deserved three points as they dominated the game, telling BBC Sport : “It can happen in football, unfortunately it happened twice to us, it also happened against Burnley.
“I am absolutely happy with the performance. We dominated from the first minute, we were aggressive and never stopped attacking. Unfortunately we scored two goals, one for each side.”
He went on to say: “We were very disciplined and sharp. I am happy with what I saw, it was a pleasure to coach on the sidelines.
“We can not guarantee results but if we play like this we can increase the chances for results.”
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