Pulis: Officials got red wrong
TONY Pulis felt the officials got it wrong when they dismissed Mo Besic during Middlesbrough’s draw with Blackburn.
Besic was dismissed in the 20th minute at the Riverside, with referee Simon Hooper showing him a straight red card. Besic embarked on an unnecessary dribble towards his own area and panicked when Bradley Dack nicked the ball off him, clearly pulling the Blackburn man’s shirt to stop him breaking into the box.
Hooper looked to have missed the incident, but after a pause when he appeared to receive information via his earpiece, he issued a red card.
Pulis accepted that Besic tugged Dack’s shirt, but the Boro boss felt goalkeeper Daren Randolph would have got to the ball ahead of the Blackburn forward.
Pulis said: “The referee doesn’t send him off – it’s the fourth official and the linesman on our side. I’ll say it now – Besic does pull his shirt. But I believe our goalkeeper was getting to the ball first, before their lad. It’s a yellow card, not a sending-off.
“How they make that decision from that distance – and a decision that ultimately changed the game – is beyond me. I think you’ve got to be 110 per cent sure that you’re stopping him from scoring a goal, or stopping a clear-cut chance.”
Boro suffered a double punishment, with Charlie Mulgrew curling home Blackburn’s opener from the freekick that followed.
Blackburn twice came close to extending their lead before the break.
Danny Graham must have thought he had scored as he met Harrison Reed’s 37thminute cross with a crisp first-time shot, but Daniel Ayala produced a superb sliding challenge to block the former Middlesbrough striker’s effort.
Five minutes later, and Graham was free in the box again, only for Darren Randolph to save his fiercely-hit shot. The ball rebounded towards Corry Evans, but the midfielder could only stab an instinctive first-time strike wide.
At that stage, the Teessiders looked like suffering a second successive home defeat, but Pulis’s bold half-time changes altered the course of the game, despite Derrick Williams hitting a post with a first-time shot for Rovers.
Substitute Britt Assombalonga curled home a magnificent equaliser midway through the second half. George Friend rolled the ball in to Jordan Hugill, he laid it off to Assombalonga with his back to goal, and he opened up his body to finish from the edge of the box.
Blackburn manager Tony Mowbray was disappointed at his side’s failure to hold on to their lead in the second half.
Mowbray said: “It’s a very frustrated dressing room. We shouldn’t have dropped points, playing against 10 men and having scored from a free-kick.
“Ultimately, we needed the second goal, and it didn’t come. If there’s one team in this league you don’t want to play against with 10 men, it’s probably Middlesbrough with how good they are behind the ball.”