Keith's red

[wellowell]

Agree giving a penalty not a surprise but if we go by the law book then every time a free kick is given for hand ball it should be a yellow as deemed deliberate and more than 50% of the time a yellow is not given so time to fix the rule book

[Handsome_Devil]

The number of handballs when a player 100 per cent intends to handle (the Hearts penalty at Aberdeen for example) must make up a minority of all infringements though.

Lasley saw the player being ready to shoot so committed to the block before the ball was going towards goal - therefore unless he had premonition, he obviously hoped to use his body rather than his arm.

Imagine the situation was slightly different, say a striker was about to find an empty net after the goalie spills a corner...the defender on the line does a star-jump just before the shot is fired. He doesn't know where the ball is going so clearly can't be deliberately moving his hand to it. He may hope to block the ball with the middle of his body but would still be sent off - to zero complaints - if the ball actually hit his arm instead.

Now I think we'd both agree that in that scenario the defender would deserve to go because he was clearly at it in trying to illegally increase the area he can cover.

Lasl

[Wellup4it]

it's been perfectly clear (and has been for a while now) that referees expect you to bring your arms in to your body when blocking.

If that is indeed the case then we can expect to see a helluva lot of penalties this season - possibly at least one per game.

[wellowell]

Won't happen but managers say decisions even themselves out over a season so we must be due a few