MY comments last week on the battering Chelsea’s Eden Hazard received from Manchester United players in their FA Cup tie prompted an interesting question.

Did referee, Michael Oliver, make a mistake in showing Ander Herrera a yellow card for fouling Hazard when it was obvious that it was another player, Phil Jones, who he had just warned?

This highlights a problem that luckily referees don’t face too often but is difficult to deal with.

Let’s first look at the law on persistent fouling: ‘A player is cautioned and shown a yellow card if guilty of persistent infringement of the Laws of the Game’.

There’s no specific number or pattern of infringements laid down that constitutes ‘persistent’ but it usually becomes obvious when a player commits a series of fouls in a reasonably short space of time.

The referee often first gives the player a warning that’s obvious to spectators, as he points out areas where previous fouls were committed, But that is for an individual offender and this was something different. Hazard was the target for several opposing players with none fouling him enough times to be considered persistent.

Whether this was orchestrated by the manager, or the players took it upon themselves, feeling that Hazard was Chelsea’s major threat, we shall probably never know, but ‘stop Hazard’ was obviously in their minds.

The referee took Jones to one side after his latest foul on Hazard but what is noticeable is that he also included the team captain Chris Smalling.

Only those three know what was said but I’m sure it was something like ‘this has got to stop, and the next player to foul Hazard will be yellow carded’. Only seconds later Herrera, perhaps ignorant of what has just been said, committed another foul on Hazard.

His yellow card obviously acted as a warning to other Untied players.

I think Michael Oliver, who was brilliant throughout the match, got it absolutely correct.