Ciaran Clark was sent off early on in Newcastle’s huge clash with Norwich last night.
It made the task facing Eddie Howe’s side far tougher and they performed exceptionally well to get a 1-1 draw.
Alan Shearer was on co-commentary on the game for Amazon Prime and offered his reaction to the incident live on air.
RONALDO NEEDS TO STOP WHINING.
“What are you doing? You talk about individual errors, the first one was giving the ball to Pukki, let him go! It’s early in the game, if he scores, he scores, there’s still time to come back from that. Crazy, stupid decision.
“What on earth is he doing? Let him go if he needs to go. There’s time to come back from 1-0 down with 11 men. Referee has no choice, absolute right decision. Madness. Correct decision.
“You go into the game, the manager and players are under pressure. You’re saying to yourself ‘don’t make any stupid errors’. Grow into the game. You’ve just seen two there from Clark. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
Shearer could not hide the passion in his voice in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
It could have cost Newcastle even more dearly on the night but Clark’s teammates stepped up admirably.
Clark’s red card underlined that the defence is the first area Howe has to sort out in January, and ideally on the training pitch before that.
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