Liverpool secured a 3\u20132 win on Monday night in a match overshadowed by a serious challenge that left Anthony Gordon walking a straight red card. The incident came when Gordon’s studs-up challenge struck Virgil van Dijk on the calf. After a review, the official showed Gordon a straight red and he reluctantly trudged down the tunnel.<\/p>\n
In the immediate aftermath, Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk described his exchange with Gordon and questioned the nature of the decision. \u201cI said to him, \u2018If that\u2019s not a sending off then I don\u2019t understand football.\u2019\u201d the Liverpool skipper revealed. \u201cIt was strange the referee had to go to the monitor in my opinion. Unfortunately, these things happen in football, if he meant it or not it happened, we move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gordon addressed the incident on social media after the match, offering a full apology to team-mates, supporters and to van Dijk himself. \u201cI want to sincerely apologise to my teammates and the fans,\u201d he posted. \u201cMy intentions were pure. I was just trying to create energy in the game and I mistimed the tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also want to apologise to Virgil. I would never intend to tackle somebody like this on purpose. We spoke after and he knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newcastle captain Bruno Guimar\u00e3es sought to explain his team-mate\u2019s actions in the same tone. \u201cI think he wanted to help too much,\u201d the Brazilian shrugged. \u201cI think sometimes you are so excited to play you make some mistakes.<\/p>\n
The red card became a defining moment of a tight contest that finished 3\u20132 to the visitors. Both the public apology from Gordon and the measured response from van Dijk shaped the conversation after the game, while Bruno Guimar\u00e3es offered a defender\u2019s perspective on a mistimed challenge that changed the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Van Dijk called it a sending-off; Gordon apologised and Bruno Guimar\u00e3es defended him. Reaction split<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,194,172],"tags":[506,59,265],"class_list":["post-2066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-newcastle-united","category-epl","tag-anthony-gordon","tag-featured","tag-virgil-van-dijk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2070,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066\/revisions\/2070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}