Tony Mowbray could not hide his frustration at Dean Whitestone's throwback refereeing display in Sunderland's 2-1 defeat at Coventry - saying it seemed the official had 'left his whistle at home'. There were any number of criticisms that could be levelled against Whitestone's eccentric performance, with both Black Cats boss Mowbray and his Coventry counterpart Mark Robins unhappy with the Northamptonshire official.
Mowbray's gripe centred on the way Whitestone allowed challenges that have incurred free-kicks all season to go unpunished, and says he would not have minded had he been forewarned. "I don't really want to get onto the officials today," said Mowbray.
"I spoke to the fourth official inside the first five minutes when he [the referee] had let two or three tackles go that all season would have been called fouls. I'm just a bit disappointed that today no-one said 'we ain't playing fouls', or 'you're allowed a bit of contact'.
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"I've got no issues with it - I actually quite like it, because it looked like a game from the 1980s when you were allowed to kick people and tackle them and climb on top of them because it looked like you could get away with whatever you wanted and he was going to play on - but it would have been nice to have been told that so I could have prepared the team. I think that Coventry grasped that the referee had left his whistle at home a bit quicker than we did and they became quite physical, and that's fine.
"I said to the team at half-time, 'when you're in a fight, sometimes you have to throw some punches'. What's difficult is that normally games never flow because referees are always blowing their whistles for fouls, but today for some reason this guy decided he'd had enough of that and he wasn't doing it!
"What's right and what's wrong? Is he accountable?"
Sunderland felt they should have had a penalty when Patrick Roberts was brought down inside the box when the game was still goalless. And the players expected a free-kick when both Jack Clarke and Dan Neil were felled in the build-up to Jamie Allen's opener, but nothing was given.
"I'm not interested, to be honest," he said when asked about the build-up to the Coventry goal. "If he doesn't give it, it's not a foul.
"I haven't asked our analysts to show me the build-up to their goal. He [the referee] didn't think it was.
"What I think is that there was a stick-on penalty when Patrick Roberts' feet got swept away from under him inside the box! I try not to talk about refs, particularly on days when we lose because it sounds like sour grapes and 'Mowbray's moaning about the ref - he's always whinging'.
"I don't want to be a whinging manager. If he didn't think there were any fouls in the build-up to their goal, fine - we should have kept the ball out of our net better."
Viktor Gyokeres scored Coventry's second goal in the 89th minute, before Amad scored a consolation with a brilliant strike in injury time.
After numerous games this season, Mowbray has been infuriated at the lack of stoppage time added at the end of games and he says timekeeping should be taken out of the hands of the officials. He cited the example of Sunderland's midweek defeat at Rotherham, when a minimum of six minutes was announced while a Rotherham player was receiving treatment and yet the referee in that game, Chris Kavanagh, ended the game early.
Mowbray said: "On Tuesday night, they put six minutes of injury time up but he played five minutes 45 seconds and he thought that was acceptable, but it's not acceptable! They have to be accountable. They put six minutes up and he didn't even play six minutes!
"He said 'oh, sorry', but what if we'd scored in those last five seconds? I've said repeatedly now that it [timekeeping] should be taken out of their hands, really.
"Somebody else - somebody independent, not from either team - should do the clock, so nobody moans. If there's a stoppage, they stop the clock.
"I don't understand why in football, where there's so many millions and billions of pounds involved, you let some guys who have got day jobs make the decisions. They guess.
"I said to the fourth official today 'I don't know what [stoppage time] you've got written down today, mate, because you're just making it up'. Some substitutions take two minutes and some take 30 seconds, but every substitution is counted as 30 seconds.
"It shouldn't be, should it? If it takes two minutes, you should get two minutes added on.
"It's really frustrating, the incompetence of it. Somebody somewhere should take a lead on timekeeping."
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