STEPHEN CARR, the Birmingham City captain, has risked inflaming tomorrow’s midlands derby by saying he has no regrets about making an obscene gesture to Aston Villa supporters at the end of last season’s controversial 1-0 defeat at Villa Park, and claiming he apologised to the English Football Association for his behaviour against his will.
The former Republic of Ireland defender received a one-match ban after accepting an FA charge of improper conduct for his actions at the end of a match that finished in acrimonious circumstances. The Birmingham players protested bitterly at the referee Martin Atkinson’s decision to award Villa a late penalty, which James Milner converted.
Carr made his gesture as he was leaving the pitch, and said he has no desire to ever again be subjected to an FA disciplinary process that treated him like “a child”.
Yet in comments that are sure to go down badly with Villa fans, Carr said he does not have any regrets about making the gesture that prompted West Midlands police to investigate the incident.
“I’ll be behaving myself this time,” Carr said. “I didn’t get fined, which was all right, but I did have to miss a match. I’m not going through that again, sitting in front of five men talking to me like I’m a child. I’ll be keeping my hands to myself.”
Asked whether he regrets the incident, Carr said: “No. That’s life. I did it at the time and it was all quite emotional. You shouldn’t regret it. It’s not good. You can’t regret it. It was a spur of the moment thing.”
Carr, who said he was embarrassed Birmingham supporters mention his gesture at Villa Park when they bump into him, claimed he was forced to apologise to the FA for his actions.
“It was the first time (of being up before a FA committee) in my whole career. It’ll be the last as well. I basically had to apologise,” the 34-year-old right back said. Asked whether he wanted to say sorry, Carr replied: “No, but there wasn’t a lot I could do.”
Birmingham received four bookings at Villa Park last season and were fined €11,500 for failing to control their players in the wake of the penalty award.
“We played well but got a bad decision, which lost us the game. End of,” Carr said. “We don’t want to be getting stupid yellows or red cards. If you get caught up too much with the fans then that can easily happen, it can spill over. We have to go there, be solid and try to nick a win.”
Aston Villa central defender Ciarán Clark has agreed a new three and a half year deal with the club. The London-born player, 21, who last week pledged his international future to the Republic of Ireland, has established himself in the first-team squad this season and played 78 minutes of the recent home clash with Chelsea.
Guardian Service
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)