Arne Slot stunned by decision in Manchester United win over Crystal Palace

Liverpool boss Arne Slot was stunned to see Maxence Lacroix shown a red card in Crystal Palace’s defeat to Manchester United, despite feeling it was the correct decision.

The Eagles defender was sent off for pulling back Matheus Cunha as the Red Devils forward burst into the penalty area at Old Trafford on Sunday.

The referee, Chris Kavanagh, took his time to decide on the decision, but pointed to the spot, before consulting the pitchside monitor on whether it should be a red card as well as a penalty.

It was decided the Frenchman was denying a goal-scoring opportunity and he was shown a straight red as a result. Bruno Fernandes equalised from the penalty spot and the Red Devils went on to win 2-1.

Slot was surprised by the decision after seeing a very similar situation in Liverpool’s defeat to Manchester City on February 8.

The Dutchman felt Marc Guehi should have seen red for pulling back Mo Salah has he burst into the box, but the City defender escaped with a yellow.

The Reds boss cannot see why VAR came to a different conclusion on both decisions and was surprised by the inconsistency.

‘Very comparable, the only difference is that Mo was pulled back by the shirt and here was a hand on the shoulder,’ Slot told a press conference on Monday morning.

‘If I look at it, I see a similar distance, maybe even the distance between Guehi and [Ruben] Dias was a bigger difference than the distance between both centre-backs of Palace.

‘The moment when I saw it, knowing what happened with us in that situation, VAR is probably checking if it is even a penalty, in or outside the box, but he will never, ever give a red card for this.

‘This is what I sometimes hold against VAR, because every time the Premier League comes in, they tell me there was only two wrong decisions over a whole season.

‘In both situations, the referee did not give a red card. In one situation he overturned it to a red card. Either one of the two is a mistake. So when you come in at the end of the season, you have to say: “Ok we made more than one or two mistakes.”‘

Slot confirmed that he felt the right decision was made at Old Trafford, but feels the Premier League will not accept that a mistake was made at Anfield.

‘Surprisingly this was a red card, no, not surprisingly it is a red card,’ he said. ‘It is, for me, a red card, because I’ve said so many times the one from Guehi was a red card as well.