After another heated clash bewteen Manchester United and Chelsea there were several talking points. Former referee Jeff Winter tells us which decisions were right and which were wrong...
What did you think of Jon Obi Mikel's sending off?
I was frustrated watching it on the television and listening to the post match comments with former professional footballers who don't seem to know what a bad tackle is.
To go or not ot go?
You don't tackle with your foot raised off the ground and your studs showing. And that's exactly what he did. It could, in fact, have been a lot worse. He may well have got a part of the ball but he certainly got his opponent, and that type of tackle is outlawed.
If his foot had have been another two inches up he could have broken his (Patrice Evra's) ankle or his leg. So that's a red card offence as far as I'm concerned.
Do you think Chelsea will get anywhere with their appeal against the decision?
I would sincerely hope that the appeal doesn't get too far for a variety of reasons; firstly, which is probably of least importance to most people, that it would undermine the authority of the referee. And secondly, it would send the message out that that type of tackle is allowed.
While some players and some people will say that they thought it was a bit harsh, next weekend if they lose one of their star players - out for six months or in some cases never to return to the game again - then I think their attitude would be slightly different.
Did you think that Joe Cole's challenge was also a straight red?
I think that tackle was just as bad as the Mikel one. The referee doesn't always get the benefit of the angle that we do on the television. He (Mike Dean) has seen it from an angle and took it more as a trip, and in which case the yellow card is a perfectly fair punishment. But when you look at that tackle again it looks a lot more malicious. It was certainly intentional and had the referee shown a red card there I would not have been surprised.
Should Rooney made it a hat-trick of dismissals then?
No I don't think that was ever going to be a red card. What we have is the emotion of a game of football.
We've got one player sent-off from one team and we get the old commentator's favourite of 'the referee's going to even things up', but this proves that referees don't think that way.
Yes, Rooney's got himself into trouble with his mouth - not for the first time and I dare say not for the last. He's then done a needless challenge on Cole, but it was worth nothing more than a word and a final warning, and that's what he got.
There's an argument that a yellow card's a yellow card and if you get two yellow cards it's a red, but I think human nature with referees is that when a player's had a yellow card then the second yellow card has got to be something that warrants a player being sent-off.
And on that occasion it was a silly, clumsy challenge. Cole made a meal of it, which is quite surprising because they're England teammates, and just a word was the right decision.
Then he's just had a situation when people are baying for Rooney to be sent-off and then Joe Cole makes that challenge. Now if he sends Joe Cole off for that challenge then there's all human cry that he's favouring Manchester United and giving Chelsea nothing.
So, you don't know what's going on subconsciously in a referee's mind, but he's already sent a Chelsea player off, they're then baying for Rooney to be sent-off to even it up - in my opinion it wasn't a sending off - and then the Joe Cole tackle happens and the referee, who's looking at it from his angle and aware of the temperature of the game and just trying to cool things down, has decided that it's only a yellow card.
The final contentious decision of a heated match was the Saha penalty incident. Was it a penalty?
Yes it was a penalty. But what doesn't help is when players make such a meal of it that it almost looks as though he's been play acting.
But there had been a foul, and we mustn't forget that, so it had to be a penalty.
The fact that Saha chooses to think he's on the high diving board afterwards, perhaps, shows the game as it is.
