We had a surprise yesterday morning, as we found out that that Junior Firpo had been given a three match suspension as a result of an incident in the match at Millwall. Our manager has complained about the short notice when he was preparing his team to face QPR, and about the FA’s process itself.

At the end of yesterday’s post-match press conference Daniel Farke got the discussion about the QPR game out of the way before launching into the main business, a rant about Firpo’s suspension that carried on for several minutes. That was the result of an incident at the end of the game at Millwall that hardly anyone noticed at the time.

There was quite a bit of jostling as the players of both sides contested the final corner of the game, before Millwall cleared the ball downfield. On the video it looks like Firpo just ran into Danny McNamara as he tried to get back downfield, before the latter fell on the floor. McNamara complained to the referee and it was mentioned in the official’s report on the game.

So the FA charged Firpo with ‘violent conduct’ and even though our man exercised his right to contest the charge, they found him guilty and handed out a three match ban. Which ruled him out of yesterday’s game and also the matches against Swansea and Luton after the international break. Opinion will be divided on whether that is a good thing or not.

The Yorkshire Post have quoted Farke as saying "It came as a shock for us, no one was aware, I've not noticed anything during the game. I've watched it back and the first thing I want to say is Junior has to behave better and we accept the ban. I was not happy with his behaviour because it was an emotional game, it was his opponent McNamara who went after him but he should have just gone away and not be provoked”.

"For a player of his experience and calibre, Junior has to behave in a better, more experienced, more mature way. I'm not happy at all with it. That's the first thing I want to say." But then Farke went on to make another of complaints about the process. "The first thing is we don't use VAR [in the Championship] but then we use the TV pictures to find something out that no one has realised during the game”

“I'm struggling with this. Where does it start, where does it end? "When you have the camera on every corner I would say there are five or six fouls for every corner hidden and you could investigate and probably have five red cards. The second thing I'm struggling with is the reason why it was investigated. The reason they gave me was because the referee reported that the player”

He contrasted this with an incident in the game at Rotherham last season. "In this case Willy Gnonto had a bloody knee after the tackle and a bruise on the knee and more or less everyone watching the game was saying something had happened. But it was not reported by the referee. A few days later we received a letter from the FA saying sorry, it should have been a straight red card and a penalty, they apologised.”

So in that case there was no retrospective action against the perpetrator. "How do we take our decisions whether it's reported or not? I think there has to be a consistency.” And he finished off by having a moan about McNamara himself, having played in an era when men were men. “I was used after the game, that whatever happened during the games you shake hands, give each other a hug and that's it.”

"Sorry, it would not be possible when I was a player after I won a game and there were feisty, nasty duels and provocation on both sides that I report to a referee as a player like McNamara has done that there is violent behaviour when there's not even an injury. I have my problems with this behaviour, I have to say. For me it's not how we should be in football”.

If you want to form your own opinion on what happened you can see a video clip on Adam Pope’s Twitter account. Mine is that anyone who thinks that’s violent conduct should be strapped into a chair and made to watch archive film of early 70s striker Wyn Davies. He was a man who knew how to deliver a proper headbutt.

The only good thing is that our favourite defensively suspect overlapping left-back will be absent during a relatively easy period of our fixture list. Lets hope we manage to get through it all unscathed.

Reuters

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