I'd back that too. If there's going to be any kind of sin binning in football that's exactly the sort of thing it should be for. Although I do wonder if an increased punishment might also see a decrease in offences actually penalised. Against Arsenal at 0-0 the ref refused to book Xhaka for a rugby tackle on Sissoko who was counter attacking through the middle with few defenders back. If he wasn't prepared to give such a blatant yellow card he'd be even less likely to do so if there was a 5-10 minute period off the pitch as well.
I agree - I should’ve said that the sin bin element would be optional for the ref. Plenty of tackles get yellow cards just for being clumsy or badly timed so they don’t need any extra punishment, but for years football has been talking about an extra level between the yellow and red card.
The sin bin element could either apply as the ref see’s fit or for specific types of punishment - those deliberate attack-stopping tackles, repeated time wasting etc - I bet Foster wouldn’t have wasted so much time on Saturday if he knew the yellow card might have seen him off the pitch for five/ten minutes. As it is the yellow card he did get was literally no punishment at all - he knew full well it would have absolutely no effect on him, his team or the result. In cases like that the yellow card is totally and utterly ineffective.
It might need to go hand-in-hand with a revamped substitution system - realistically you can’t leave a team without a goalkeeper, so in the Foster case perhaps teams would always have the option of making a temporary substitution - bringing on a replacement keeper for an outfield player instead, or nominating an outfield player to go off whilst letting the keeper stay on?
I’m sure it could be done and done well, but we all know football is behind every other sport in addressing its problems, so realistically it’ll never happen.