Patrick Bamford claims he still gets trolled over his dive to get Aston Villa’s Anwar El Ghazi sent off two years ago.
Bamford went down pretending he had been hit in the face by El Ghazi during the melee following Leeds ’ hugely-controversial goal in the 1-1 draw at Elland Road and the Villa striker was dismissed.
El Ghazi’s red card was overturned on appeal and Bamford was hit with a two-match ban for deceiving the referee.
The act was out of character for the Leeds striker and he says he still gets mocked on social media, despite apologising.
Saturday evening will be the first time the sides have met at Elland Road since that infamous clash and Bamford said: “I still get sent flipping gifs and memes of me falling on the floor from that game and I’m ‘come on, let it go, I’m so sorry’.”
Villa were incensed by Mateusz Klich’s goal and had stopped playing, thinking Leeds were going to knock the ball out of play because Jonathan Kodjia was down injured.
Marcelo Bielsa won a FIFA Fair Play award for ordering Leeds to let Villa equalise straight from the restart to calm the volatile situation and Bamford says there has been a real rivalry between the clubs since.
“It seems like over the last couple of years we have become rivals with Villa, I don’t know why,” he told the latest edition of the Official Leeds United Podcast.
“Maybe it’s that whole thing I did with that stupid dive and we had to give them a goal and that kicked it off.
“That was one game, surely you let go of that?”
Three of Bamford’s 13 Premier League goals came against Villa at Villa Park in October and he has been denied a couple more by two contentious VAR offside calls against Wolves and Crystal Palace.
Bamford feels football’s law makers need to review VAR and the offside rule because too many goals are being disallowed by hairline decisions.
“Looking at mine at Wolves, the lineo gives it offside, you go to VAR and have a look at it and the line drawn to my knee seems to be diagonal, and the line drawn to the guy’s heel seems to be straight down,” he said.
“There’s no consistency and how can you be 100 per cent certain? The camera angle was not parallel to where I was on the pitch, it’s looking back.
“I was flicking through twitter trying to find a still of the image and I saw one guy tweet if you are fouled outside the penalty box, and your feet are outside the penalty box, but your knee is inside, it’s not a penalty, it’s a free-kick.
“So if your feet are behind the offside line, then surely you should use the same rule?”
