Peterborough United boss hits out at 'completely irresponsible' dissent bookings and insists his side must be better prepared for refereeing inconsistencies
Peterborough United boss Luke Williams has criticised his players for the amount of dissent bookings picked up during defeat to Plymouth Argyle on Saturday.
Posh endured a difficult afternoon at home as they were beaten 1-0 by Argyle in a match in which they were clearly second best.
There was also much frustration from the crowd towards referee Ben Atkinson for his lack of control of the game and a number of his decisions, including his choice of which incidents to punish with a booking and which not to.
Despite committing 21 fouls to Posh’s 13, the yellow cards were handed out 8-4 in Posh’s ‘favour.’ Both Tom O’Connor and Kyrell Lisbie were booked for delaying the restart, while Harry Leonard and Brandon Khela picked up yellows for dissent.
It was this failure to keep emotions in check that frustrated Williams most, insisting his side have no power over the quality of decisions being handed down by each referee.
William said: “The fouls committed by the opposition were maybe more than double ours but they had fewer bookings. What we have to learn is we can’t pick up bookings for dissent. It is completely irresponsible.
"This is a demonstration of emotion and not being able to hold your emotion and not let anxiety run away with you. It doesn’t matter how unjust you feel a decision is, the answer is not to pick up a cheap booking.
“We cannot play a game of football hoping the referee is going to be of a very high standard in terms of consistency. They are human beings and have to officiate in a way they see fit and we can’t factor for that. Saying ‘well I said this last week and the referee didn’t book me’ or ‘this happened two weeks ago and the referee didn’t give a booking for it,’ that’s just nonsense.
“It’s down to us to understand how to manage ourselves and not for us to manage every single referee.”
Among the most controversial decisions was Peter Kioso’s second yellow card in the 88th minute. The Posh boss refused to ‘whinge’ about the referee and did point out that he felt Kioso could have done better to avoid giving him a decision to make.
Williams added: “I can only talk about my player. Peter is such a good player and so experienced that he could have avoided that and if I put that to him, he would be the first to admit that he could have controlled himself.
“It’s impossible to say anything else. I’m just standing here whinging if I’m talking about the referee. I can’t go into work every day to coach referees.”