TWO Premiership footballers from the same team are facing Football Association sanctions after being sent off for fighting each other yesterday.

Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer, England internationals and Newcastle United teammates, had to be separated by other players nine minutes from the end of their side’s 3-0 home defeat by Aston Villa.

Both players will miss their club’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United on April 17 and can expect to be further disciplined by the FA.

Graeme Souness, the Newcastle manager, said the incident had stunned him, adding that the players, both of whom have had troubled pasts, were on their last chance.

“I think Lee Bowyer is indefensible. I think he is guilty, as the pictures show, of throwing more than one punch and he has to accept whatever punishment comes his way,” he said.

“Without speaking to the chairman — I do not know his view on it — but I would hope he would see it like this: that if it ever happened again, that would definitely be the end for the pair of them.”

Barry Knight, the referee, consulted his assistant and both players were sent off with a red card, leaving their side with just eight men on the pitch — defender Steven Taylor had earlier been sent off for deliberate handball.

The Villa player Gareth Barry, whose second goal preceded the fight, said he had never seen anything like it on a football pitch.

“You don’t want to see that happen on the pitch, it’s only right to try and break it up,” he said. “Both players lost their head and it’s unfortunate but I’m sure they regret it.

“I’ve never seen it in a game I’ve been involved in, there was obviously a lot of frustration boiling over.”

Northumbria police said it was a football-related matter.

The defeat brought to an end Newcastle’s 12-game unbeaten run on a day when a crowd of 52,000-plus had turned up to celebrate the decision of the former England captain Alan Shearer to postpone his retirement and play on for another season.

In December 2001 Bowyer was acquitted at Hull crown court on charges of affray and grievious bodily harm with intent in relation to an assault on an Asian student outside a Leeds nightclub.

However, the judge at the court ordered Bowyer to pay costs of more than £1m, saying he had lied to police.

Dyer’s recent form on the pitch for Newcastle had led to his recall to the England squad for last week’s games against Northern Ireland and Azerbaijan.

His name was tarnished in the infamous “roasting” incident at the Grosvenor House hotel in London in 2003. The room in which a girl claimed she had been raped by a number of footballers had been booked under Dyer’s name.

One of Souness’s first jobs when he took over at Newcastle this season was to escort Dyer to a police station after a Sunday newspaper printed photographs of the midfielder urinating in public. He also crashed his car on Newcastle’s quayside.

A spokesman for Northumbria police said: “As far as I am aware it’s a football-related matter in respect of their conduct on the pitch.”

He added: “I am not aware of any issue for the police to consider.”

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