Sheffield United manager, Chris Wilder has claimed two ‘poor’ decisions from the refs went in favour of Liverpool on Wednesday evening.
Sheffield put in a solid performance against Liverpool on Wednesday evening, only to be undone by two fairly controversial goals. Controversial in the eyes of manager Chris Wilder, certainly.
The Blades’ boss has bemoaned two decisions against his side, one of which led to Liverpool’s second goal. And he isn’t sure about the first goal, either.
His main problem was with the Dominik Szoboszlai goal. Darwin Nunez won the ball back right before providing the assist, but did so with a very aggressive tackle. Wilder insists it was below the line of acceptable right now.
“I was most disappointed with the tackle by the centre-forward on Jayden Bogle,” said Wilder after the game.
“Twenty-five years ago when I was playing, people would talk about it and say that’s a decent tackle. Might have been aimed at me, that, where you take the ball but you take the man.
“He’s wrapped his legs right around Jayden Bogle and it’s resulted in the second goal.”
“But I think it’s a foul,” he went on to say. “I think there is a foul leading up to it where he jumps into Jack Robinson. It’s a foul.”
And Wilder also believes his team should have had a penalty late on. Ibrahima Konaté had a physical challenge with James McAtee and while nothing was awarded, Wilder feels the referee made a big error.
“In any part of the pitch, if a centre-half pushes a centre-forward, a centre-forward pushes a centre-half, or a midfield player pushes a midfield player with two hands, and he goes down, off-balance, it’s not up to him to stay on his feet,” he explained.
“He’s pushed him in the box with two hands. It’s a penalty. As simple as that.”
Both are incredibly debatable decisions, to say the least. Most would have been shocked if the Konaté one was given, for instance, as there really wasn’t much of a push at all. The contact wasn’t excessive.
As for that of Nunez, few would have batted an eye if a foul had been given on the spot. It was an aggressive tackle and walked the line, in truth. But enough to review the goal and disallow it? It certainly wasn’t that bad.
Wilder did also comment on the Van Dijk goal, but admitted he wasn’t sure what happened.
“Virgil is what, 10 yards out with a free chance and free opportunity,” he said. “Something’s happened in there, a collision or coming-together.”
It’s easy to see where Wilder’s frustration comes from, even if it’s also easy to see why the referees made the decisions they did. There’s nothing egregious here, though.
