The 24-year-old will now not play again until New Year’s Day at Southampton
Femi Azeez will sit out much of Millwall’s festive fixtures after his straight red card against Hull City was upheld by the FA, despite the Lions’ attempts to have it overturned.
Azeez was dismissed by referee Gavin Ward with City leading 2-0 at The Den last Saturday, after appearing to kick out at two-goal hero Kyle Joseph.
Ward didn’t see the incident himself and had initially allowed play to continue before the incident was picked up by the assistant, who was yards away from the incident.
The in-form attacker was sent off, and with that comes an immediate three-game ban, but Millwall appealed the length of the suspension. The FA have refused their claim, and Azeez will miss games at Blackburn Rovers, at home to Ipswich Town on Boxing Day and the home meeting with Bristol City on Monday week.
“The three-game ban will remain as is,” boss Alex Neil told Southwark News when asked if the club had been made aware of the outcome of their appeal.
Prior to the appeal being rejected, Neil admitted the angles he had seen on the replay were not in Azeez’s favour. Joseph himself explained how he had been stamped on in a rather painful area.
“It’s a bit of a difficult one. I don’t think the angles in which I’ve seen it make it look good,” the Scotsman said. “However, I think you can see the lad is holding on to his leg. But then obviously, it looks like he’s trying to push off, and as he pushes off, he stamps on the lad or trods on him, or pushes off him, or however you want to sort of view it.
“At the moment, I think that’s [three-game suspension] where we are just now. But I believe that as a club, we’ve put in an appeal of some kind, regarding the severity of the punishment for Femi’s red card. So I’d expect to hear more about that today.”
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