Former referee Mark Halsey has talked about whether Wilfried Zaha should have been sent off in Aston Villa's recent Premier League win at Villa Park.
Dean Smith's Villa picked up a 3-0 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday despite being down to ten men. Tyrone Mings was sent off after picking up two yellow cards, but the first yellow came as a result of a flashpoint involving Zaha and the defender. Zaha also got a yellow card for the incident (as per BBC Sport).
Smith described both bookings as soft yellow cards but Halsey has talked about whether Zaha himself should've been sent off for what happened during the flashpoint where he appeared to throw a hand at the Villa defender.
Halsey on whether Zaha deserved a red against Aston Villa
Halsey was exclusively talking to The Transfer Tavern recently and he discussed whether the Palace winger should've been sent off for throwing a hand at Mings. The former referee believes that VAR must have had a look at the incident and deemed it not to be worthy of a red card. Halsey himself feels that yellow cards for both Zaha and Mings were appropriate outcomes.
He said:
"I mean, you could argue the case (of a red card) but then, you have to say ‘well, why didn't VAR pick that up and recommend a review?' So VAR must have been happy that it wasn't a serious and obvious error made by the referee on that occasion. To be fair, I thought two yellow cards was the right outcome in that situation.”
Villa were 1-0 up when Mings was sent off but despite the disadvantage, Smith's men scored through Anwar El Ghazi and Kortney Hause in the second half.
Villa showed grit despite the disadvantage
It is anyone's guess if Zaha's sending off would've made any difference in the result considering the fact that Villa won 3-0 even while having ten men on the pitch. More than that, Smith's men completely outperformed Palace on xG as well, generating a tally of as much as 3.5 while Palace's tally stood at a lowly 1.06 despite the man advantage (as per FBRef).
Zaha had picked up a rating of only 6.32 in the game and while that was the fourth-highest rating for the Eagles, it was a disappointing rating in a general perspective (as per Whoscored).
So the winger clearly didn't make much of a difference and a potential sending off for him may not have been too impactful for Villa.
In other news, Aston Villa have been buzzing about Matty Cash's latest tweet - read more about it here.