Allardyce: Poor Decisions Didn't Help

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

A 3-0 defeat at the Britannia Stadium was as much down to the poor refereeing from Steve Bennett (at not awarding a penalty and then sending Christopher Samba off) as anything according to Allardyce.

Allardyce told Sky Sports: "Instead of getting back in the game and getting a penalty - two weeks on the trot there has been a handball on the line and the referee hasn't seen it - we are 2-0 down.

"This one was going wide and there was a deflection on Chris Samba's header. If the penalty is given, perhaps one of their players is sent off, we get to 1-1. It's a big, big decision that has gone against us.

"I can't understand why Samba was sent off. I don't know why he was booked in the first place.

"I watched a game on Monday where Shawcross was pulling a (Sunderland) centre forward back and the referee gave nothing.

"Chris Samba has been sent off for not a lot and that makes the game very difficult to come back at 2-0 down with 10 men."

However, Big Sam did also put some of the blame down to our own defending and that simply wasn't good enough.

He added: "We created a lot of our own problems, the first two goals were something that we had worked on and we simply did not take care of that.

"Danny Higginbotham crept round the back for the first one and we were caught napping.

"We knew they were very good on set plays but we didn't sort it out. It was amateur defending from us."

Some of the decisions against us weren't good, however, we just weren't good enough on the day either and mistakes from a referee or not that doesn't change the fact that the majority of the performance wasn't acceptable!!


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