Stoke boss Mark Hughes was not happy with referee Mike Dean after the official sent off Ryan Shawcross.
Stoke boss Mark Hughes was not happy with referee Mike Dean after the official sent off Ryan Shawcross.
In fact Hughes seems to think that the referee ‘lacked common sense’ by sending him off, but two yellows means a red in our rules, and that’s something that has been missed by Hughes.
You can in some ways feel sorry for him for his bitterness of the situation, even though Shawcross is no stranger to the red card, but we dont agree that there should be one rule for Stoke and one for all the other teams.
But the facts are Shawcross committed two fouls and paid the price, the fact that Van Aanholt and Duncan Watmore grabbed the goals after Shawcross went was just icing on the cake for us.
Hughes moaned: “I felt the referee should have used common sense, to be perfectly honest. Ryan feels he got a touch on the ball – if that`s the case, then he`s got their first, so the referee should have given him the benefit of the doubt.
“He didn`t, so he`s made the decision with the help of, I think, his assistant on that side of the field, who got involved, so we are down to 10 men.
“Even at that point as the game progressed, I didn`t think Sunderland really created a great deal and didn`t cause us too many problems even with one less man.
“They needed another break – they got it because the referee for the decision for the free-kick totally wrong. The lad Johnson has just dived, basically, just jumped out of a non-tackle, basically.’
