UPDATE: Masuaku has finally issued an apology on the club website…
“I want to say sorry for my actions on Saturday. I let down my team-mates, the manager, coaches, board and the fans. I am very sad because the manager and coaches have put a lot of faith in me but I will work very hard to try and win that back. It was in the heat of the moment and out of character for me. I know it was totally unacceptable and I will learn from the first red card of my career.”
So what should happen to Arthur Masuaku? He’s been in great form of late, and made the left midfield slot his own. I doubt many of us saw that coming back in August. But his behaviour today was an outrage. David Moyes was fizzing…
“He (Masuaku) will deserve everything he gets and he will get something off us as well. It’s unacceptable, totally unacceptable. Just as we were looking to get back in the game, we were only one-nil down, we weren’t playing that well but we were giving ourselves a chance to get back in it, but that changed it. We are all disappointed to be out of the Cup, but we didn’t play well enough and Wigan thoroughly deserved their victory. It was definitely down to our performance and we obviously made some big errors. Certainly, the error for the decision to send one of my players off was despicable. I’ve got no complaints about that at all. All I would say is that there is no way the referee saw it, but ultimately they got to the right decision. I can have no qualms about it… “I’ve not seen this from him. We’ve played him since I’ve got here and tried to give him a chance. He wasn’t really in the team. We like him. He’s a good boy around the Club and I like him, so I have to say it’s out of character, but it doesn’t matter what character he is. I asked him ‘Did you spit?’ and he said ‘Yes’.”
Well he could hardly deny it, could he? He’s likely to get a six match ban from the FA, and deservedly so. That means he will be out until the Manchester United home game on 18 March. Some fans are suggesting we should just get rid. In my view that would be incredibly short-sighted and is just a knee jerk reaction. I think the maximum he can be fined is two weeks’ wages. If he has anything about him he should donate the other four weeks’ wages to a childrens’ charity. He needs to come out and show absolute contrition. We all do stupid things from time to time, and he deserves all the punishment he is going to get. but everyone deserves a second chance, and so does Arthur Masuaku.