Joey Barton has given his reaction to Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Rochdale.
Barton’s side led at the break thanks to Paddy Madden’s 16th goal of the season. The Irishman got on the end of Ross Wallace’s cross to give his side the lead after 45 minutes.
With Lewie Coyle shown a straight red for a challenge of Joe Rafferty ten minutes into the second half, it was backs against the wall, and with the pressure put on Town by Rochdale, they got their equaliser through Ian Henderson.
Here is what Barton had to say after the match….
On the game….
“At half-time we are the only side that looked like going on to win the game and we looked the better side whilst creating the better opportunities. Rochdale are very fortunate to go in at the break only a goal behind.
“For 50 odd minutes in the match, we were comfortable but then we see ourselves at a numerical disadvantage.
“You can’t play with ten men as football is a hard game, it’s hard enough with 11v11, but we took the lead in the match, but we need to make sure that we start closing games out. I can’t fault the lads for their effort.”
On the red card shown to Coyle…
“It’s frustrating because the referee hasn’t given the decision and he was 10 yards away from the incident.
“The linesman has tipped him off who was 5 yards further away from the decision than I was, and I was closer and had a better view than him.
“We are absolutely devastated at the decision because we will probably end up with another player who gets his red card rescinded, but that doesn’t help us on the day. It’s happening far too often.
“You cannot take a guess from where he was standing and from my opinion, if I was to give the decision, it would have been a guess and a flip of a coin. Unfortunately we went down to ten men, backs against the wall and gave Rochdale the impetus. If that is a sending off, we will all end up with two or three players on the pitch.
“We’d have got three points today [if we had 11 men on the pitch], but it feels like it’s us against the world at the moment. We have a solid group in that dressing room and today is something we will just have to absorb.”
On the next game against AFC Wimbledon…
“We knew last time out against them we were miles the better side, but we lost the game. This time we just need to make sure we are switched on because we are obviously hurting after the FA Cup game.
“Tuesday is a chance for us to win a game of football and is another opportunity for us to reach the level of performance we produced in the first half.”