Steven Schumacher wants his team to remain optimistic despite their lingering relegation fears following their 3-0 loss at the Swansea.com Stadium yesterday evening.
However, the Stoke manager also took stock of two significant refereeing calls. The first was to disallow a goal by Niall Ennis after Carl Rushworth’s ball went loose, and the second was to give the Swans a penalty for what he thought to be a foul outside the box.
Looking back on the match, Schumacher told the Stoke official website that he could not support either of the decisions made. Regarding City’s goal that was disallowed, Schumacher stated, “At the time, I thought it was a ridiculous decision.”
From where I was standing, I could see that the goalie attempted a quick throw-in, collided with Niall—who didn’t even realise he was there—and then tapped the loose ball in.
“I thought it was a bad call at the time, but after watching the replay with our analyst, I’m certain it wasn’t a foul.
We didn’t play well in the first half, but it should have been 1-1. It is disappointing.
We needed to go for us and they didn’t, and in a game that wasn’t going the way we wanted it to, the decision to award a penalty for the second goal also appears to be based on a challenge outside of the box.
“Sheffield Wednesday will be a physical game, they are going to put balls into our box, they are going to have a lot of set-pieces – that is how they got their goals last night – so we will have to defend those situations better than how we did tonight,” Stokes manager Mark Hubel said of the team’s impending titanic match against relegation rivals Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
The takeaway is to not pout, to pick ourselves up and move on because there will be a big game this weekend.
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