Enzo Maresca has criticised referee Anthony Taylor for not sending off Arsenal’s Piero Hincapie for his elbow to Trevoh Chalobah’s face.
Chalobah was seen using ice on a cut by his cheekbone at half-time after replays late in the first half showed he had received a rogue elbow to the face from the Ecuadorian centre-back.
It came just three minutes after Chelsea went down to ten men when Moises Caicedo had a yellow card for a studs-first challenge on Mikel Merino upgraded to straight red by the VAR.
Chelsea had to play the game with ten men after Caicedo’s 38th-minute red card but Maresca explained after the game that he believed Arsenal’s Hincapie should have been sent off, too, and that the game should have been ten against ten.
Maresca was informed after the game that his captain, Reece James, had told broadcasters that the game should have had “one more red” — implying Hincapie ought to have been given his marching orders by Taylor.
“I think Reece is right,” Maresca said. “They [broadcasters] just asked me about Moi’s red card. It is a red card.
“But why was [Rodrigo] Bentancur against Reece not a red card at Spurs away?
“As a manager, we struggle to understand why they judge them in different ways. Moi is a red card? Yes. Bentancur is a red card? Yes. Why did they not give them a red card?
“It is just that that we struggle to understand. It is a red card. The reality is that it is a red card. Why did they judge it in a different way?”
Maresca revealed what Taylor had said to him when he asked why Hincapie had not been dismissed after fouling Chalobah, for which the defender was instead shown a yellow card.
“The Trevoh one, I asked the referee. He said to me that it was not an elbow. This is what they said.
“He has a black eye. He was [given] ice at half-time. But they judged them in different ways.”
