Joey Barton has given his reaction to Fleetwood Town’s narrow 1-0 defeat at league leaders Portsmouth on Saturday afternoon.
Oli Hawkins’ header five minutes after half-time sealed the points for Pompey, with Fleetwood reduced to ten men in controversial circumstances late-on after Nathan Sheron was dismissed for a second yellow card.
Read below Joey’s key quotes from his post-match press conference…
On the match…
“It was a pretty even match, with both sides cancelling each other. We have come to a place with 18,000 fans and it was silent for the majority of the game. It looked to be a set-play game, where you have two good sides competing and the key is to make the most of those opportunities when they arrive.
“I thought on the whole our delivery from set-pieces has not been as good as it has in recent weeks, which is disappointing.”
On key decisions not going his way…
“On the whole, I thought the officiating team were poor. We got a player booked for taking too long a throw-in, where they have a player who took at least double the amount of time; and he didn’t get booked.
“Young Nathan Sheron was sent off for winning the ball – bizarre. Everybody in the stadium apart from the referee, fourth official and linesman on our side see that Nathan won the ball clearly, yet he was sent off. We can’t appeal that as it was a second yellow card, which for us is ridiculous.
“As I’m finding at this level, the officiating leaves a lot to be desired. They [the referees] have to be more consistent.”
On Nathan Sheron’s dismissal…
“He was solid, and I’m devastated for him to be sent off for what is a ridiculous decision. He’s disappointed because he’s worked hard to get into our starting 11 and now he understands that we can’t appeal a wrong decision, he doesn’t have the ability to play against Peterborough on Tuesday.
“Not only has the referee cost us today, but he’s certainly going to cost us on Tuesday night.
“The sad thing is that we’re powerless. He was sent off during the game, and will now miss a match because the wrong decision was made.”
On being able to bounce back at Peterborough…
“We knew it was going to be a tough week. We’ve come to first away, and now second away on Tuesday and again, we’re in every fight.
“I said to the lads that we can’t want for the lack of effort – clearly we needed a little bit more quality today. But saying that, we could be saying that for both teams today, because if we would have won 1-0, it would have been the same thing.”