Intent does matter, the double jeopardy rule is specifically based on intent!
I just think the way it's worded at the moment leaves a gap for what happened last night, the wording highlights a specific get out from the foul deserving a red card based on positive intent to win the ball in attempt to avoid overly punishing an honest attempt at preventing a goal but still carries the deterrent against players who may be tempted to cynically trip an opponent hoping they would miss the resulting penalty. However, I believe last night's incident to be a pure accident from what I've seen of it, and to me that seems to fall into a bit of a grey area, with the current wording there's no attempt to play the ball so the red is right but for me there's no attempt at anything, just bad luck, so it feels unfair to have a player punished as if they had made a cynical professional foul to ruin a goal scoring opportunity.
It's a difficult one to really get into the rules with any clarity though, as someone could easily make a stray run across an attacker with the intent in mind to create that 'accidental' tangle of legs, at which point you've still not got the intent to challenge but it becomes very subjective if someone is making a natural run to get back at a player or running in a way to try and create some sort of obstruction.
and how come Arsenals chances 'should have' been goals but Killmans header isn't viewed as such ?
