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🚨 Roy Keane on Luke Shaw refusing to go down after Rodrigo Bentancur headbutted him: “Everyone’s talking about the headbutt. Fine. It’s a red card. But I’d like people to watch what happened before it. There’s a loose ball and Bentancur comes flying in as though somebody’s told him the ball is leaving the country. Luke Shaw is going towards it. He sees the challenge coming and gets himself out of the way. And thank God he does. Because if he leaves his leg there, we’re not discussing a headbutt. We’re discussing whether Luke Shaw will be playing football again this season. Now, Luke has had his injuries. He knows what it’s like to spend months watching football instead of playing it. So I can imagine what’s going through his head when he sees a man throwing his entire body at a loose ball. ‘Not this again.’ And he jumps out of the way. Some people will say, ‘Oh, he pulled out of a challenge.’ Yes. And he’s got two functioning legs afterwards. Good decision. But then Bentancur gets up, Cunha goes towards the ball, and there’s another wild swing at it. I’m watching this thinking, ‘Does he know there’s a football match going on, or is he trying to remove the ball from the stadium?’ That’s when Shaw goes over and pushes him. Now, was the push necessary? No. I’d tell Luke that myself. You can have a word with somebody without putting your hands on him. But I understand why he’s angry. He’s just avoided one dangerous challenge, watched his teammate nearly get caught by another, and he’s looking at Bentancur as if to say, ‘What exactly are you doing?’ Bentancur goes down from the push, gets back up, and decides to put his head into Shaw. And this is the part I liked about Luke. He doesn’t collapse. He doesn’t grab his face and roll around waiting for the referee to notice. He stands there. Somebody beside me said, ‘He could’ve made more of that.’ I said, ‘Why should he have to?’ The referee can see what happened. The cameras can see what happened. A headbutt doesn’t become a headbutt only when somebody falls over. I played in an era when players would tell you exactly what they thought of a challenge. Sometimes with words. Sometimes not with very polite words. But there’s a difference between playing hard and being reckless. A hard tackle has a purpose. You’re trying to win the ball. When you keep launching yourself into challenges without any regard for the person in front of you, don’t act surprised when somebody has something to say about it. And don’t confuse Shaw staying on his feet with the incident being harmless. He doesn’t have to fall down to prove somebody’s lost his head. The funny thing is, Luke spends the whole sequence trying to keep his legs out of trouble. Then Bentancur gets himself sent off because he couldn’t keep his head out of trouble. I’d be having a word with Shaw about the push. But I’d be having a much longer conversation with Bentancur about everything that came before it.”