Allardyce: Youngsters Never Looked Out Of Place

Blackburn Rovers manager Sam Allardyce discusses his thoughts on our defeat at Aston Villa on Saturday with Sky Sports.

Rovers' FA Cup run for another year ended in the Third Round as we went down 3-1 at Villa Park, however, a sending off and a missed didn't do us any favours. Allardyce didn't think that El-Hadji Diouf's red card was worthy of the straight red that the Senegalese International received.

Allardyce told Sky Sports: "I see a lot of those situations that never result in a sending-off.

"They will justify it by saying it was two-footed but the referee, Howard Webb, is a long way away.

"He did not know what sort of tackle it was because I have seen a playback on the video. If the assistant referee made the decision, then fine, but I don't think he did."

Big Sam admitted long before this FA Cup match that the first in a trio of meetings against Villa coming up in the next few weeks was the least important of them as the Carling Cup Semi-Final was his priority so he was always going to rest players for this match, as he did. However, Big Sam feels that those that came in (including youngsters Phil Jones and Martin Olsson) didn't look out of place at all and did us proud.

He added: "I have to give them great credit for the way they played in the second half but all the damage was done in the first half for us.

"We gave ourselves such an uphill battle, the first half was a disaster for us. We went 2-0 down, missed a penalty and had a player sent off.

"At least we showed the right professional approach in the second half to get back into the game, even with 10 men.

"The Carling Cup is our priority and I made a lot of changes but I thought young players like Phil Jones and Martin Olsson never looked out of place."

Personally I'm disappointed to see us go out of the FA Cup, however, this decision to slightly play this down will be completely justified if we go on and beat Villa to make it into the Carling Cup Final, however, this isn't going to be an easy thing at all!!


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