🚨Joe Hart on the Matty Cash incident with Doku before Nicolas Jackson goal in Aston Villa’s win over Manchester City: 🗣️Joe Hart: “I’m not sitting here saying the whole league is deliberately out to get us. I’m saying what I saw. Matty Cash should’ve been sent off for stepping on Doku before Jackson scored again. The whole league is against us at this point. That wasn’t a normal coming-together. His studs went into the back of Doku’s foot, right around the Achilles area. Whether he meant it or not, when you plant your studs like that on an opponent who’s not in a position to protect himself, that’s serious foul play in my book. That’s the kind of challenge that ends careers if it lands a fraction higher or catches the wrong part of the ankle. VAR should have been all over it. Instead, Peter Bankes gives a yellow and waves play on like it’s a minor trip. And what happens five minutes later? Jackson scores again and Villa are back in front. You’re telling me that doesn’t change the game? Cash is still on the pitch, still able to influence things, and City are suddenly chasing again. If that had been looked at properly and he’d gone, it’s 11 v 10 with the momentum swinging our way. Instead we get a soft yellow and the referee moves on as if nothing happened. Here’s the part that really gets to me. If that was one of our players — say Gvardiol or Dias does that to one of theirs — the pile-on would be instant. Rival fans, the pundits, the media, they’d all be screaming for a red card before the next phase of play even finished. ‘Endangering an opponent,’ ‘reckless,’ ‘should’ve been sent off.’ But because it’s against City, it gets brushed off as ‘a bit clumsy’ or ‘accidental.’ That’s the double standard. We win a lot, we dominate, so the bar for what gets punished against us seems higher and the bar for what gets punished for us seems lower. I know some of the Villa fans will just shrug and say ‘it was only a yellow, get over it.’ Of course they will. It helped their team. If the roles were reversed and one of our lads had done that to their winger five minutes before we scored, half of them would be demanding a retrospective ban by half-time. Don’t pretend otherwise. We’re judged differently because of what we’ve achieved. Success brings scrutiny, fine. But it also seems to bring a different set of rules. We have to beat the opposition on the pitch and then we have to overcome decisions that keep going against us as well. That’s the reality right now, and until someone in authority starts applying the same standards to challenges like that one on Doku, City are going to keep feeling like they’re fighting more than just the eleven men in front of them.”