Manchester United look set to be without centre-backs Harry Maguire and Lisandro Martinez for their huge Premier League clash with Chelsea.
Martinez was shown a straight red for grabbing Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s man bun in Monday’s 2-1 defeat to Leeds.
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The Argentine centre-back was given his marching orders in the 56th minute after referee Paul Tierney was advised to go to the pitchside monitor.
Martinez could be seen tugging Calvert-Lewin’s hair as the duo battled for the ball, with VAR intervening over potential violent conduct.
Replays suggest that the 2022 World Cup winner lightly grabbed the England international’s locks due to being off-balance – pulling out the striker’s hairband as a result.
The Red Devils were 2-0 down at the time of the dismissal in the eventual 2-1 loss as they suffered their first league defeat to rivals Leeds since 1981.
Martinez now stands to miss crunch clashes with Chelsea, Brentford and Liverpool, with United unlikely to be successful in their appeal against the suspension.
The Red Devils are already set to be without centre-back Harry Maguire against the Blues with the FA poised to slap him with a further one-match ban, according to reports.
Maguire, who was sent off in the 2-2 draw away at Bournemouth before the international break, is in line to be handed further punishment after swearing at fourth official Matt Donohue following his sending off at the Vitality Stadium.
It is a huge blow to interim boss Michael Carrick, who has already insisted Martinez’s red card was harsh, with the hair pull proving to be a major talking point amongst fans and pundits.
Speaking on the latest episode of eSPORTY’s Inside Devils, the Guardian’s Manchester correspondent Jamie Jackson insisted the correct call was made – sparking a heated debate between the panel.
He said: “I thought Martinez deserved the sending off.”
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Later in the show, he remarked: “Two reasons, first of all he pulls his hair, everyone keens on saying, ‘He was just grappling for something and it just happened,’ no, I don’t buy that.
“But also, have a look back at the incident, he twice goes for the hair, the first time he didn’t get it, second time he grabs it, so for me, it’s pre-meditated.”
“And his reaction afterwards was very bad ham acting, ‘Oh what’s happened here?’, rather than absolute furious, ‘What are you doing referee? You’ve had an absolute shocker.’
“That just compounded my sense that yeah he meant it, it’s a little bit like offside, if you pull someone’s hair, for me, you’ve got to go, just like if you’re an inch offside [you’re offside].”
It was a view shared by eSPORTY’s Angelina Kelly, who declared: “It’s violent conduct! It is violent conduct to yank someone’s hair. Have you seen those stills? He has hold of it. You know what the problem is?
“Lisandro Martinez was too small and too weak to actually grab it properly, because if he’d have been a bit taller and bit stronger, he would have got a really good hold of it.”
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Host Flex was left baffled by the opinion of his colleagues, as he instead stated Martinez was wrongly sent off.
He remarked: “This is a physical game, this is a contact sport, and last time I checked, the Premier League was supposed to be the biggest advocate for physical, front foot, dominant football, where there is contact.
“And we have now reached a stage where they have sanitised our game so much, I don’t recognise it any more.
“In the IFAB [International Football Association Board] laws of the game, specifically Law 12: Fouls and Misconduct, the key rule, hair pulling.
“It says, ‘Hair pulling is treated as violent conduct if done with force and aggression.’
“In this thing called football when we are jostling for positions, we are being physical, it’s a centre-back against a centre-forward, that is proper football.
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“You’ve got a centre-back who has got an arm in his face, because there’s a big lump striker doing that, it’s not deemed as a foul, it’s called jostling for positions, sometimes it is [a foul].
“If it’s with excessive force or it’s aggressive, you can get sent off for doing that really strong in someone’s face, if you glance across somebody’s face or there’s contact with somebody’s face, it’s not always a red card, it’s not always aggressive, it’s not always violent conduct.
“The same way if you accidentally take a hairband – he’s off balance and falling back.
“It’s disgusting, our game is finished, and if we want to call this thing football, then you lot enjoy it, I’m out.”
Flex then proposed a new rule change to stop such a red card happening in the future as he continued to defend Martinez.
He said: “Tie it [long hair] up. That’s another thing, get the durags out, it’s a hazard [long hair]!
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“I can’t go on to the pitch with a ring, I can’t wear an earring, it’s going to get caught.
“The guys with sweatbands on to keep the dreadlocks back, I think there needs to be a new rule – the man buns need to be covered.”
Asked by Kelly what Calvert-Lewin should have had on his hair, Flex replied: “He should have had a little durag on, that’s what I’m saying.
“A little skull cap, that’s what he should have had, because now players are getting sent off for minimal contact on hair buns – the game’s finished.”
Flex added: “There has to be [a grey area], because that means that every single foul is violent conduct.”
He concluded his argument by saying: “This is a contact sport, so within our sport, there needs to be a threshold.
“And there needs to be decisions made by people in the VAR situation to decide whether something is violent, aggressive, and whether something is deliberate.
“And according to the rule where it says, ‘Aggression and deliberate’, we did not witness those things in that incident.
“It was soft, it was silly, and our game is too sanitised.”
