Just seen the highlights.
A travesty of a decision from the ref to send RVP off. It's possible that he did know he'd been whistled offside before he shot, but it's just as likely that because of the noise of the crowd and concentrating on striking the ball he just didn't hear the whistle. Because there's no way to know, you just can't book him for that.
The rule is in place to punish players who boot the ball away in a defiant act of petulance. That clearly wasn't what happened tonight.
Still, as bad as that decision was, the ref not giving the pen to Barca in the first half was equally bad.
Lots of people on the CFC site are saying RVP should have been off in the first half anyway. Was it just the one incident they're referring to? I thought there was little in it myself.