A better Blues performance was unfornatly not enough to beat the referee at WHL.
Blues had the first real chance when a Neil Kilkenny cross was stabbed goalwards by Jiri Jarosik only to be kept out by England’s no.1 Paul Robinson.
The second half began with Blues on the attack straight away forcing a save out of Paul Robinson inside 15 seconds.
Heskey and Jarosik broke through the Spurs defence before providing Gray with the chance.
The Blues winger should have put the chance away but his shot from 12 yards was pushed away for a corner.
Neil Kilkenny found Upson with another accurate corner but his header was cleared over the bar by Mido for another corner.
The first robbery of the game came after 57 minutes when Upson was ajudged to have fouled Keane inside the box and the ref awarded the penalty.A VERY HOME DECISION.
Really Upson might have been holding keane but he also needed to grab keane to keep his balance because he was being backed into by keane.
The penalty was converted by the diver, keane.
Blues went straight up to the other end and should have had a penalty.Dawson clearly kicked Mustafa’s ankles after Izzet had knocked the ball past him. But the CHEAT of a ref didn’t give it and sent off Izzet for diving.
Blues were finally beaten after Jarosik and Dunn got in each others way on the edge of the Spurs box, Tottenham raced down the other end and Defoe smashed the ball into the top corner but he didn’t look like he ment it, i think he just wanted to kick it into the car park a la Geoff Hurst 1966.
Bruce’s Reaction
‘I was looking for a response after last week’s debacle and today we were very good,said Bruce.
We played some excellent football.
We looked a threat and created four or five chances, but we all know what happens if you don’t take them.
Our Achilles Heel is that we don’t take our fair share of the chances we create and at this level you have to take them because you don’t usually get ten or 12, you get four or five.
‘But the overall performance was very good as good as we’ve possibly played.’
‘I thought we were positive in everything we did, but unfortunately we were playing against 12 men as well with the referee’s performance today,’ added the Blues boss.
‘He’s usually got my hugest respect, but for me today he’s made huge decisions which were wrong.
The Robbie Keane penalty was innocuous as far as I was concerned and he made a meal of it.
The one that looked a penalty was Muzzy.
There was contact in the box and he went over and the referee is reaching for his card to send him off, so you can imagine how we feel today.
After that we were down to ten men and it’s hard enough to come here with 11.
‘We’ve gone a little bit ragged towards the end because we’re still trying to chase the game and see if we could muster an equaliser which we thoroughly deserved but it wasn’t our day.’
Man Utd (h)- Wednesday