Somebody remind again what the rules are regarding penalties and red cards? I thought you wouldn't get a red card for a genuine attempt at getting the ball.
Against Stevenage, I can just about at a stretch accept that Dendoncker was red carded for the shirt pull, but then that was outside the penalty area and should never have been a penalty. If the penalty was given for the subsequent challenge (i.e. the ref chose to ignore one foul in order to give another) then that seemed a perfectly legitimate attempt to get the ball, so why a red card as well as a penalty?
I'm a bit confused about the choices made by the ref and VAR in that incident.
The rule is below. I swear the ref and VAR got this totally wrong. It should have been a penalty OR a red card and free kick outside the box:
DENYING A GOAL OR AN OBVIOUS GOAL-SCORING OPPORTUNITY (DOGSO)Where a player commits an offence against an opponent within their own penalty area which denies an opponent an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and the referee awards a penalty kick, the offender is cautioned if the offence was an attempt to play the ball; in all other circumstances (e.g. holding, pulling,pushing, no possibility to play the ball etc.) the offending player must be sent off.