Manchester City and Chelsea to both be charged after Aguero tackle, mass fracas at the end of Saturday's match — report

In a development that should surprise nobody, according to multiple reports, including this one in the Telegraph, both Manchester City and Chelsea are expected to be charged under that vague, unhelpful, all-blanketing FA charge of "failing to control their players".  Which, I suppose, is true in a sense, with both teams rushing in, pushing, shoving, grabbing, instigating and so on.  Regardless of who or what started the fracas, the end result is what often matters the most.

Manchester City and Chelsea expect to be charged by FA after crazy Sergio Aguero is accused of sparking mass fracas https://t.co/d4mV9EVY9e

— しょーご (@chelsea_199714) December 5, 2016

That said, beyond just the team charge, there should be individual bans for Sergio Aguero, who somehow still retains his "not that type of player" aura, and Fernandinho, who repeatedly grabbed Cesc Fàbregas's throat.  Both City players received straight reds, which means a three-match ban at minimum.  But because of Aguero's retrospective three-match ban earlier this season for elbowing Winston Reid — remember, not that type of player! — he should be facing a four-match ban.

Speaking of retrospective action, it would not surprise me if The FA also looked at the Chalobah shove on Agüero (Nemanja Matić got a two-match ban for a similar incident with Ashley Barnes as you might recall, after an appeal reduced the punishment from three games) or the Fàbregas cheek brush on Fernandinho that provoked the rather strong reaction.  Sure, Fernandinho grabbed Fàbregas's neck first (from behind), but again, the cause-effect doesn't really matter in these sorts of cases.

A lot of it will depend on referee Anthony Taylor's report, who gave yellow cards to both Chalobah and Fàbregas, which could mean that their role in the incident is settled — unless The FA changed their rules again recently about retrospective bans for yellow cards (it is entirely conceivable that they did; or that they would ignore their own rules).

It's unclear how quickly the FA will rule on this issue, but I suspect it'll be sometime this week.  Given Chelsea's recent history of falling afoul of this "failing to control players" rule, I'm expecting a huge fine once again, possibly eclipsing the record £375k fine (reduced to a still-record £290k on appeal) we received the last time a team lost control against us.  Yeah, I know...