Clubs, managers, players, fans – everybody – are guilty of seeing every game through their particular team’s colour of tinted glasses, and there always, always has to be an understanding of just how difficult it is for match officials to get every decision right, particularly in the pressure cooker environment of a professional game, where there’s so much constantly at stake.
But sometimes it’s right to feel aggrieved, and it has to be ok to talk about it afterwards, as we did with manager Paul Simpson on Saturday afternoon.
Big moment number one was a handball, a very clear handball, that wasn’t given. But not only were the hosts denied their spot kick, but the aftermath led to a boiling point and a red card which reduced the Blues to ten men.
“I’ve seen it back and at the time I thought it was a handball,” the gaffer told us. “The players, most of the crowd and all of us were appealing for handball.
“Looking at it, it seems like a really easy decision to give, I have to be honest about that. The distance between the shot coming in, the fact that the player’s arm isn’t by his side, so it’s in an unnatural position and it strikes his arm.
“The referee, give him his due, is in a good position and that’s probably the only positive thing I can say about him from the game. How he doesn’t give it, I don’t know.
“He’s tried to explain it to me when I went in with the assessor, and still to this point now I feel he’s wrong. It should have been a penalty, it wasn’t given, and unfortunately from the very next corner Ryan had a bit of a rush of blood and I don’t know if it’s a slap or push on Pratley, but he deserved to be red carded for it.”
“We’ve been really good in terms of our discipline this season, really good, and I’ve been delighted with the way we’ve gone about that side of things,” he added. “I don’t even know what caused it, there was a little bit of a coming together with Pratley, but I’ll need to watch closer to see what happened.
“It seemed a little bit of an exaggerated reaction to do what he did, but I’m not defending Ryan, he deserved to be sent off. Once you lift your hands, whether it be a slap, a punch or whatever it is you do, the referee has to make that decision.
“It is a rush of blood that he’s got to learn from. He's worked so hard to get back and he’ll now be missing for three games, in what are two really big games coming up this week. We’re already in a situation where we’re down in numbers in forward areas anyway, so it’s even more frustrating.
“From what I’ve seen I don’t think there’s any contesting of it. I’ll need to look at it again before I make a call on that. But from what I’ve already seen, I don’t think there’s any point wasting our money on that one, and I’m presuming it will be a three-game ban as well.
“I’ve already spoken to him about it. I don’t think there’s anything more I need to say to him. He will be dealt with because that’s unacceptable. We’ve had incredible discipline, as a whole group so far this season our discipline has been first class.
“We’re going to have to stick together now, we’ll have to look after Ryan, it’s a huge learning experience, remember he's still a young fella.
“He’s been working his socks off, sadly he’s now got a three-game suspension and he’s going to have to work extremely hard during that so that he’s ready when we need to get him back out there.”
Having dealt with the handball and sending off, there was the huge ‘second phase’ offside rule that seemingly came into play as Orient netted their third goal with the United contingent convinced the flag was about to go up.
“I think that was another really easy decision to give,” he insisted. “I think it’s a blatant offside, and my understanding is that the rule has changed so that it has to be a deliberate pass for it to become a second phase.
“How, when Corey is stretching across to try and intercept the ball, and in my view he missed the ball completely. That means it’s not a pass but, again, the referee and his assistant on the main stand side have said that through their comms the fourth official has said there was a definite touch from the blue.
“Well, he was stood next to me and I could see that there wasn’t. It wasn’t a controlled touch or pass, it wasn’t deliberate and I just think they’re easy decisions.
“There were a lot of things in the game where I felt the referee had completely lost control and in my opinion I didn’t think he was capable of controlling that game. That’s really disappointing.
“I will also say that I know how difficult it is for referees, I totally understand that. But when you have easy decisions like the offside and the handball, as straightforward as the red card decision was, then they should be given correctly.
“Jordan Gibson’s is a yellow, Jayden’s late tackle is a yellow, no problems with that, but the two big calls he made against us were just wrong.
“One leads to a red card after not getting a penalty and the other leads to a third goal which takes the game further out of our reach. I think they’re huge calls and huge mistakes.
“I’ll say again that I totally get it’s a really difficult job. I understand that. But there are four of them there that can’t come up with the right outcome on key decisions. We have to get that right.
“I don’t believe that we should be running up and down the touchline lambasting referees and assistants, I don’t feel we need to do that. But it’s incredibly frustrating when results are sometimes determined by blatantly wrong decisions.
“The referee isn’t the sole reason for us losing, so let’s not start getting into the realms of that. We’ve cost ourselves with some not so clever decisions of our own.
“Let’s think about all the good things, let’s concentrate on where we caused them problems, the energy that we showed and let’s dust ourselves down and get ready for another great challenge on Tuesday.”