It has to be a red and a penalty. Looking at it from a game theory point of view: -ball is going into net=100% goal -opponent palms the ball off the line to save a goal -what does the punishment have to be to make the opponent indifferent to palming or not palming the ball off the line (making the opponent indifferent being the absolute minimum, the punishment should actually be a deterrent) Let's look at some punishments we could give: -a penalty is given: -this results in a goal ~85% of the time. This gives the opponent a 15% less likely chance of conceding a goal compared to the previous 100%. That's a huge win for the opponent and they should take that trade off any time. -a penalty is given and a yellow: -this results in a goal ~85% of the time and i couldn't even bother counting the ratio of bookings:second bookings it was so insignifant. Essentially, a yellow rarely results in seeing that same player receive another booking that match. So the opponents have shaved their chance of conceding a goal by 15% and will rarely be down a man. The only way we even get close is by making it a red and a penalty (unfortunately I couldn't find a stastic for how often teams in the Prem concede after going down to 10 men to add up the 85% chance of pk goal + the chance of scoring with a man advantage). The other option is to simply award the goal. It's not without precedent in sports. This happens in hockey if Team X has an empty net, Team Y gets the puck and is in all alone on the empty-net, only to be hauled down by a Team X player to prevent the empty-net goal. The goal is simply awarded in such empty-net cases rather than the usual penalty shot being awarded (which in hockey only has a roughly 33% chance of being converted). Doesn't even matter if the player got a shot off. We also see such a rule with goaltending in basketball. For goaltending to be awarded, the ball only has to have the possibility of going in, be on a downward arc, and not touching the rim. In this specific case, going with the hypothetical punishment of simply awarding the goal, I'd say it's harsh since we know the ball was going wide. Some may argue that since the ball was going wide, it shouldn't have been a sending off. That's the only argument that holds ground here. To that, I'd argue that Ox clearly thought the ball had a high chance of going in otherwise he wouldn't have done something so drastic. He would have just let the ball go wide. So for all intents and purposes, Ox believed he was preventing a goal and palmed the ball away. Knowing that, his actions have to be considered in that light.
