The referee decided this one, and by now it feels like a scheduling choice. Chris Kavanagh sent Ryan Gravenberch off at Anfield on Sunday for a second yellow card in the 62nd minute, and three minutes later Erling Haaland had Manchester City in front. Liverpool lost 3-0. The game was eleven against eleven and goalless when Kavanagh reached into his pocket. By the time Jeremy Doku added a second in the 68th and Rayan Cherki a third just past the 78th, it was ten against eleven and broken.
Andoni Iraola watched the first booking, the one that set the trap, and he was right about it. "I think the first foul of Ryan is never a yellow card, never," he said. "These kinds of games, just a stomp on the big toe, or something minor." Jamie Carragher called the dismissal itself "a shocking decision." A manager and a former Liverpool defender who's seen every kind of Anfield night don't land in the same place by accident. The call was soft, and soft bookings carry a club.
City's supporters have a real point here too. Haaland's finish was first class, and Liverpool didn't cover themselves in glory after the sending-off, conceding twice more in the final stretch instead of digging in with ten men. A good team should still punish a numbers advantage. But Liverpool only had ten men because of a yellow their own manager says should never have been given. City exploited an opening somebody else handed them.
This keeps getting under people's skin because it's the same referee and the same beneficiary, over and over. Kavanagh was the VAR at Goodison Park in February 2022 when Rodri's handball went unpunished in City's 1-0 win over Everton. Wayne Rooney accused him earlier in 2026 of one of the worst decisions he'd ever seen in football, in an FA Cup tie, and Kavanagh was stood down the following week. The Premier League put him in charge of Liverpool against City anyway, and left Michael Oliver off the weekend's list entirely after questions were raised about Oliver following City's guilty verdict and the revelation he was among those paid to fly out and referee in the United Arab Emirates in 2023.
This was City's first match since an independent commission found them guilty of breaching the league's financial rules. The appeal is pending and the sanctions haven't been set, so nothing's finished. City's answer was to turn up at Anfield with their fans waving inflatable bananas and walk off three points clear at the top through Matchweek 6, six wins from six since the verdict. A club found to have cheated is winning as comfortably as ever, and on Sunday a referee with a track record of calls that go City's way made it easy.
Controversial calls happen to every club, that's true. What doesn't happen to every club is a pattern this consistent in the biggest fixtures, always tilting the same way, with no consequence for the men holding the whistle. The league can't decide whether its top official is clean enough to work this match, found its own champions guilty of cheating, and then watched its referees wave that same club clear at the top of the table. If you want to know why fans think the whole thing is rigged in City's favour, you don't need a conspiracy. You just need Sunday.
