Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur both hit with six-figure fine for pitch melee
Aston Villa and Tottenham have both been hit with a six-figure fine for a mass confrontation after their fiesty FA Cup clash.
Villa ran out 2-1 winners at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium earlier this month but the game ended in acrimony amid a melee in front of the Villa support at the final whistle.
Tempers boiled when Spurs midfielder Joao Palhinha angrily confronted Villa striker Ollie Watkins, who was celebrating in front of Villa's 9,000 jubilant travelling fans.
That sparked an response from Villa's Morgan Rogers and Lemar Bogarde, both of whom intervened and Rogers was involved in some pushing and shoving with Palhina before more players from both sides joined the melee.
Spurs boss Thomas Frank later claimed Watkins had been 'provoking' Palhina by celebrating directly in front of the Tottenham man - who had been involved in several fractious moments with Villa players during the game and had put in a tackle which forced Boubacar Kamara to limp off after just 10 minutes.
Now though, the FA has imposed a £125,000 fine on both clubs after they each admitted a charged of failing to ensure their players and/or officials did not behave in an improper and/or provocative way after the final whistle.
In revealing the fines, the FA said in its written response the referee Craig Pawson reported: “After the final whistle a number of players came together in the home team penalty area. No misconduct was witnessed by the match officials. The incident involved players and technical staff from both teams.”
The FA Commission added in its written submission: "Based on the video evidence it had seen, the Commission did think that slightly more of the blame lay with Tottenham, in the sense that its player, JP (Joao Palhina) had sparked the whole confrontation due to his pushes on OW. As far as the Commission could see, this action was not provoked by OW (Ollie Watkins), who remained calm.
"It accepted that the Villa player, MR (Morgan Rogers), should not have reacted in the way that he did and his actions clearly contributed to what followed.
" Thereafter the Commission felt that the two teams were equally to blame for the Incident. 28. The Commission did not agree with the clubs that the Incident should be regarded as at the low end of the spectrum.
"The number of individuals who became involved and the fact that this was a high-profile fixture, televised around the world, were aggravating factors. In addition, the proximity of the incident to the crowd was a serious aggravating factor in the view of the commission.
"The fact that the Villa fans witnessed at close hand one of their players being pushed repeatedly by a Tottenham player had the potential to create crowd unrest and could easily have sparked a much more serious incident."