Robins boss accuses referee of having an 'absolute shocker' during Luton defeat

Bristol City boss Liam Manning accused referee John Busby of having an ‘absolute shocker’ during his side’s 3-1 loss at Luton Town on Easter Monday.

The Robins chief had a point too as with the Hatters having just scored their third goal of the afternoon, Izzy Jones racing through to crash in in his second goal for the club, with 15 minutes to go, visiting substitute Sinclair Armstrong appeared to be away from the Town defence to bear down on Thomas Kaminski, with every chance of swiftly halving the deficit once more.

Recalled centre half Teden Mengi tried to get back to apply some pressure on the Republic of Ireland international, but a tangle of legs saw the attacker go to ground, with the Kenilworth Road crowd holding their breath as one, expecting a penalty to be awarded, or at the very least a free kick and a red card for the Luton defender.

However, there was no shrill blast from the official’s whistle, Kaminski able to pick the ball up despite the protests from the City players, as the collective sigh of relief from the home fans showed what they felt about the decision. Discussing the incident afterwards, Manning said: “The key moment is the ref makes an absolute shocker.

"I don’t want to sit here and blame the referee as ultimately we needed to be better as well, but I think everybody felt he was taken out. It was ridiculous. Everybody apart from the referee did (feel it was a foul) I think. I just didn’t think he managed the game very well second half. I thought he was okay first half, but yeah, just a bad decision.”

Although feeling that Town should have had two spotkicks of their own prior to the Robins’ incident, Luton manager Matt Bloomfield’s poker faced slipped to give away when asked just he had been thinking when Mengi and Armstrong were involved, as he continued: “I think there was probably three penalty claims of which none were given. We had one with the handball in the first half, one where Milli (Alli) had his head punched off just before Thelo (Aasgaard) scores and that one at the end. So probably three incidents, I haven’t had a chance to watch them back yet.”

With both sides having completely contrasting goals for the final two games of the campaign, Luton just desperate to stay in the Championship, City looking to exit the league via the play-offs, Manning’s side had come into the contest as one of the form sides in the division with just one defeat in 12 games. He felt the way Town went about the contest made it increasingly hard to continue that good run, adding: “It’s such a tough place to come, they're so physical and so direct that it becomes quite difficult how you manage and how you get control.

"I thought the lads did a really good job, it then becomes how do you wrestle back the style? What you then can’t do is turn the ball over cheaply like we did second half as then you’re going to be defending your box like we did second half. They’re loading up long throws, anything within 15, 20 yards of the halfway line is coming in our box so you’ve got to be prepared to defend that. It’s hard to generate momentum as we shot ourselves in the foot by turning it over cheaply and then we’re conceding.”