Tony Pulis protects 'very, very promising' Liam Shaw after 'reckless' red card left Sheffield Wednesday scrambling for Reading draw

The red was Wednesday’s fifth of the season so far, already taking them to within just one bad tackle of last season’s Championship high, an unwanted record that was held by Derby and Wigan.

Shaw was adjudged to have used excessive force in his mistimed challenge on Royals wing-back Omar Richards and was given his marching orders just 30 minutes into the Hillsborough clash.

Pulis, who has expressed his frustration at the Owls’ ridiculous red card tally, laughed off any notion of an appeal against the red card when speaking to The Star after the game.

“I’ll speak to him tomorrow or Friday and we’ll go through the tackle,” he said.

“I think he’s a very, very promising young player and although I took him off on Saturday, I only took him off because he’d been booked and I was worried he might get sent off.

“He’s a little bit reckless at times, with that youthful enthusiasm. And we don’t want to stop that.

“But what we want to do is generated that enthusiasm in the right manner and that wasn’t tonight.

“He put the referee under enormous pressure and you don’t need to do that.”

Pulis conceded he may have to handle Shaw’s sending off differently to that of more senior man Josh Windass, who was given his marching orders just 17 minutes into Pulis’ Owls reign in their defeat at Preston.

Describing both incidents as ‘stupid’, the Welshman admitted he fully understood the decision of referee Oliver Langford in sending Shaw off.

“The sending off was disappointing,” he said. “It’s a reckless challenge whether it’s a good challenge or not, it’s reckless. You can’t do that today and I understand why the referee has given a red card.

“We have to be a lot more understanding of the rules. We’ve had five cards since the season started, which is really poor.”

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