Steve Evans claims he warned EFL in furious rant after Birmingham City defeat
Steve Evans has questioned the appointment of Farai Hallam and criticised the referee’s decision to award Birmingham City’s match-winning penalty against Rotherham United.
Jay Stansfield netted from 12 yards in the 81st minute after Hakeem Odoffin tripped Taylor Gardner-Hickman inside the box. Stansfield had earlier cancelled out Sam Nombe’s opening goal at St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park.
Evans hit out at the award of the penalty in his post-match interview and revealed he asked the EFL to appoint an ‘experienced, strong referee’ to cope with the atmosphere at St Andrew’s. Hallam has refereed 32 professional games and came under-fire from Evans.
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The Rotherham boss said: “It’s not a penalty is it? Haks has pulled out of the challenge, the boy runs into the back of Haks and is playing for it. I understand the player goes down and tries to get a penalty in that situation.
“Before the game, before I’d even seen the officials, I requested an experienced, strong referee who can handle this when they are going for promotion. It’s a fervent atmosphere here, so you need a strong referee that is going to stand strong, particularly when they are attacking the home end. That’s the end where they get the penalty. There’s probably 15,000 up there screaming ‘Penalty’ and it’s human nature.
“I was expecting any challenge in the box to go to the spot. People say is that questioning the integrity of the referee? No, it's human nature. Try and be the referee in World Cup finals in the fervent atmospheres they’ve got there, but I tell you St Andrew’s is more partisan with 29,000 home fans screaming at the same time. It’s very difficult to say ‘I don’t see contact’. I’ve been in and seen the referee and he says he sees contact. That’s his decision.
“There’s lots of little things about his performance that make us disappointed but principally we’ve lost the game because we were comfortable, they’d run out of ideas and made three substitutions to try and get back in the game, and we gave a sloppy ball out of defence.”