Jonjo Shelvey has a certain reputation when it comes to tackling.
Shelvey has received four red cards and 28 yellow cards in his Premier League career and his discipline has been called into question on several occasions in the past.
The midfielder can consider himself lucky to have avoided any punishment on Wednesday night, when he came off the bench and put himself about during Newcastle’s defeat to Manchester United.
Shelvey replaced Mohamed Diame shortly after half-time and many felt that he deserved to see a red card for a challenge on United’s Paul Pogba 20 minutes later.
Shelvey came through Pogba from behind and didn’t appear to have much interest in attempting to win the ball but referee Andre Marriner didn’t feel that the tackle warranted anything other than a warning.
Former Premier League official Mark Clattenburg has an interesting theory on why Shelvey escaped a red, suggesting that a well-rested Marriner would have sent the Newcastle player off.
“It was a very poor challenge from Jonjo Shelvey which could have caused severe injury to Paul Pogba,” Clattenburg wrote in his Daily Mail column.
“Shelvey catches Pogba on the back of the knee with his studs showing with very little chance of playing the ball and clearly endangered the safety of his opponent.
Great win to start 2019 🙌🏾⭐…caption this …🤣@ManUtd #mufc pic.twitter.com/lI0XdfDYAH
— Paul Pogba (@paulpogba) January 2, 2019
“Andre Marriner, who failed to recognise the severity of the challenge, has had a busy Christmas period.
“Fatigue of all the travelling and matches may have contributed in his failure to spot that this is a red card challenge.
“Pogba knows how bad the challenge was and goes in to gain some retribution later in the match on Shelvey, which failed to even get a yellow card.”
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