Coventry City manager Tony Mowbray refused to blame referee Nigel Miller for his part in City's 2-1 defeat at Bury.
The referee gave Bury a penalty which was converted by Leon Clarke but Mowbray, unlike the City support, refused to blamed Mr Miller and told the Coventry Telegraph's Alan Poole: “I don’t want to get involved with the referee – I’ve had one or two things with him over the years but it would be churlish of me to start commenting after a defeat.
“It would have been nice if we’d have won the game and then perhaps I could have talked about the referee but we didn’t so we take it on the chin and move on.
“The naivety of the first goal is ridiculous,” he said; “I’m really unhappy with that.
“It’s been 15 years since teams have been cutting it back from that position for somebody to sidefoot it in; how on earth they didn’t fill the space was beyond me!
“The penalty? The referee had no inkling of a penalty but the linesman wanted to put his flag up and wave. There’s contact because they were grappling, but it started 15 yards outside the box.
“I’ve watched it back three or four times and I think it was a really, really poor decision and they change games.”
Mowbray brought on Marcus Tudgay and Marc Antoine Fortune for the last half hour and said “I’m not sure I could have asked much more of us.
“Even in the first half I don’t think we were under any real danger and in the second half we were controlling the game, dominating. We just lacked the quality to finish off the chances we created. and they’ve got to start going in of course.
“Fortune’s a good footballer and I’m just trying to get him up to speed to start a football match. Half an hour will do him good for now but I don’t think anybody should question his quality or his strength and somewhere down the line he could give us a platform for our young players to run and break off.”
“It would have been nice if we’d have won the game and then perhaps I could have talked about the referee but we didn’t so we take it on the chin and move on.
“The naivety of the first goal is ridiculous,” he said; “I’m really unhappy with that.
“It’s been 15 years since teams have been cutting it back from that position for somebody to sidefoot it in; how on earth they didn’t fill the space was beyond me!
“The penalty? The referee had no inkling of a penalty but the linesman wanted to put his flag up and wave. There’s contact because they were grappling, but it started 15 yards outside the box.
“I’ve watched it back three or four times and I think it was a really, really poor decision and they change games.”
Mowbray brought on Marcus Tudgay and Marc Antoine Fortune for the last half hour and said “I’m not sure I could have asked much more of us.
“Even in the first half I don’t think we were under any real danger and in the second half we were controlling the game, dominating. We just lacked the quality to finish off the chances we created. and they’ve got to start going in of course.
“Fortune’s a good footballer and I’m just trying to get him up to speed to start a football match. Half an hour will do him good for now but I don’t think anybody should question his quality or his strength and somewhere down the line he could give us a platform for our young players to run and break off.”