Manchester City demand Premier League rule changes and complain to referee bosses over brutal tackles
Pep Guardiola’s league leaders have sent a strongly-worded letter to referees' chief Mike Riley - and want officials to be able to retrospectively upgrade yellow cards to red
MANCHESTER CITY want to rewrite the rule book to stop their stars from being clogged.
Pep Guardiola’s Premier League leaders have made an official complaint to referees’ chief Mike Riley over the tackles which threaten to undermine their season.
In a strongly-worded letter, City are also calling for a rule change to allow officials to retrospectively upgrade yellow cards to red.
Now the Etihad outfit are hoping other top flight clubs will back them.
Boss Guardiola has been incandescent at a series of challenges on his players which he feels have not been properly punished.
The club believe some of them have been potentially career-ending tackles and cannot understand how it keeps happening.
Nine of the incidents were highlighted in SunSport last week as injuries have started to impact on City’s attempt to win the Quadruple.
Winger Leroy Sane was ruled out for several weeks with ankle ligament damage after a horror tackle by Cardiff’s Joe Bennett in their FA Cup clash on January 28.
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Three days later, Kevin De Bruyne and Brahim Diaz were on the wrong end of X-rated challenges from West Brom players — who only got yellow cards.
In the letter, written by chief operating officer Omar Berrada, City have questioned why yellow cards cannot become red on review.
Fifa confirmed in 2012 that yellow cards can be upgraded by national associations and the practice is common in France, Italy and the United States.
But the FA’s view has previously been that they do not want to ‘re-referee matches’.
So if an incident has been seen and dealt with at the time it is very unlikely to be looked at again — even if there is recognition that a red card should have been shown.
However, City feel the authorities have set a precedent as they have started to review diving cases retrospectively.
City hope to arrange a meeting with Riley and get his backing.
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They then want to speak to the FA and Premier League about their concerns.
City’s hierarchy - including chief exec Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain - met the day after the West Brom game to discuss what action they could take.
Begiristain is the man most likely to meet with Riley as Guardiola focuses on the team’s hectic schedule.
But City are deadly serious with their grievances and are not going to go away.
