best hope is that Sonko's red will be downgraded to a yellow. I haven't seen it yet, but reports seem to indicate it was harsh, although I don't know if that means harsh to be called a foul, or just harsh to be a red. Welcome to the premier league I suppose. Credit the team for giving a good show despite being a man down away from home in front of a near full house at Villa Park, and hope for better things at Wigan.
The Reading107FM announcers didn't question the penality, but they did question the color. It sounds like Moore went down pretty easy. Reading was in charge up until the 33rd minute. If the newbie Referee Mason was sticking to the letter of the law, then it sounds like Samuel should have received a 2nd yellow for his foul on Seol. Looking forward to seeing the highlights on this one.
Samuel absolutely should have had a second yellow in my opinion. It was a much worse foul than his first, which was pretty borderline. The play for the few minutes before Sonko got the red card was pretty poor, you could tell something bad was about to happen. They just seemed too willing to just kick the ball long and let Villa come at them. Apparently, up until the point I started watching, Reading had dominated, but almost immediately after, Villa started to play better. The Sonko red card seemed harsh to me. Initial contact was made outside of the box, then Sonko lost his balance and just fell into the attacking player. Reading played pretty well for being down a player. They got kind of sloppy late and it led to what should have been another Villa goal, but was wrongly called offside. One of the poorer parts of the game was Marcus' distribution. He kicked it straight back to Sorensen more than once. Hopefully the Wigan match goes better. I'm afraid they'll be less tired and more match fit because they didn't have to play a midweek match. I guess Sodje will be playing in place of Sonko. I was surprised he didn't come on at any point today.
After watching the match, I have to agree that it was a penalty, but not a red. There was contact and it caused the A.V. player to lose the chance. Sonko should have been called, but I don't think he did it on purpose.