Rio’s appeal against the three match ban for “Violent Conduct” incurred when he appeared to lash out at Fagan during our game against Hull has failed and backfired.

He now faces a four match ban – the extra game coming as the FA felt the appeal was frivolous.

Fergie has been reported as saying that he felt Rio had a good case because he was being “punched and wrestled”. Looking at the images, it looked like Fagan perhaps gave him a particularly nasty nip becuase Rio swung around suddenly and lashed out. It looked like an instinctive reaction to something Fagan was doing to him.

However, you can’t go around whacking people around the head in any walk of life and certainly not on a football field.

I think Fergie really, really wanted him to play in the game last night because Vidic, whilst on the bench, was obviously not fully fit to start and play in such a high-intensity game but it looks like he could be back for Arsenal on Sunday.

He’ll have to be or we’re down to the bare bones again in defence and bare bones against Arsenal at the Emirates is not good. Not good at all.