Burnley boss Scott Parker discusses Hannibal's dive vs Brentford and early withdrawal
Burnley’s defeat to Brentford could well have been a different story if one major moment had gone another way.
With the game finely poised at 0-0 during the first-half, Burnley were gifted the ball deep into Brentford territory after the hosts had been caught playing out from the back.
It left Hannibal with the ball at his feet barely 12 yards from goal, but – with the goal at his mercy – he opted to take an extra touch to take it around his man rather than shooting.
The midfielder then threw himself to the ground and was rightfully pulled up for a dive, subsequently receiving a yellow card from referee Sam Barrott.
Hannibal himself didn’t argue his case, suggesting he knew he had made a big mistake.
While there was still plenty of time left remaining in the game, which ended in a 3-1 victory for the Bees, it would have been a huge swing in Burnley’s favour and given them something to hold onto had he stuck away the chance.
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“Yeah, he needs to shoot,” his manager Scott Parker said.
“I don't know whether he's anticipating the contact, he thinks he's going to get contact, I'm not sure.
“Again, at real time I thought it must have been a penalty because I don't know why Hannibal would have gone down, but that's one of those things.”
The booking meant Hannibal had to walk a disciplinary tightrope for the remainder of the game, albeit he was hooked off relatively early in the 60th minute.
“Obviously he was on a booking at that point,” Parker explained, when asked about the early withdrawal.
“I thought he'd done really well today. We also probably just needed to change the flow of it a little bit as well at that moment in terms of the physicality of what the game was and Lesley coming into it, so that was the reason.”
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