Last Saturday, Sheffield United's Stephen Quinn could have been red-carded as Aron Gunnarsson and Marlon King were for going in with studs raised and his feet off the ground, but with Quinn's victim Jutkiewicz not making a meal of it and the City players not surrounding the referee, Quinn got a yellow in stead of a red that other referees might have shown.
"I'll never condone that," said Boothroyd to the CT's Alan Poole. "I'm not claiming to be whiter than white far from it - I'll do whatever it takes to win - but we're all custodians of the game and we've got a responsibility to the kids who are watching.
"If I saw my son waving an imaginary card on Sunday morning, I'd go mad, so if I encourage my team to do so, I'd be a hypocrite.
"I'll just fill in my report and see what I get back and I have to say that Dave Allison who is the league referees main man is absolutely fantastic. If you've got a problem, you can approach him and say what you think. Sometimes I'm calm, sometimes I'm vitrolic and he'll agree with me or disagree but he usually pacifies me for a little while.
"One of my complaints is that refereeing is about the whole of the pitch and it sometimes seems to me that referees are keen to make a decision in the middle of the pitch but not so in the areas that count, the 18 yard boxes. All I can say after Saturday's game against Sheffield United, is that I thought you were supposed to swap shirts after the game.
"We're all in this together and although you've got to try to be diplomatic, there has to be a time when you have to say what you think."