Speaking to Sky Sports after the weekend’s results, Chris Foy claimed that the Plymouth Argyle were ‘fortunate’ to not be down to ten men inside half an hour.
The Pilgrims took the lead through Morgan Whittaker after 24 minutes, but it was only minutes later that Cundle was booked for a challenge on Hume after Sunderland were initially handed the advantage.
Chris Foy has now criticised the decision not to send the forward off, with that error potentially having a major impact on the game given that Cundle went onto provide the assist for Plymouth’s second.
“Although this is a difficult one to spot in real-time, I think the Plymouth Argyle player is fortunate to have only received a yellow card for this challenge,” Foy said.
“The challenge is late, with a high point of contact and is made with speed, force and intensity that endangers the safety of an opponent. The tackle is made with studs showing and going into the Sunderland player’s leg above the ankle making the ankle buckle.
“These are the factors a referee will consider when making a decision as to whether it is serious foul play (red card) or just reckless (yellow card). In my opinion, the better outcome would have been to award a red card to the Plymouth Argyle player for serious foul play.”
Can Sunderland blame the ref for Plymouth defeat?
It honestly feels like there is no point in completing about bad refereeing decisions these days, as they have just become part and parcel of being in the EFL.
It would be very interesting to see where we could have been in the Championship table had these decisions been corrected, but we can’t really dwell on it after the weekend’s performance.
The referee didn’t cost us the game, because we just simply weren’t good enough. They could have been down to nine men and we probably still wouldn’t have managed to score a goal.
A mid-week game gives Tony Mowbray the opportunity to change things up at the Stadium of Light, with Eliezer Mayenda and Adil Aouchiche likely to come in.
But it is hard to get your hopes up when we have already been through three strikers so far this season – and we had all hyped up Nazariy Rusyn before the trip to Plymouth.
Mayenda is really our last chance at finding a goalscoring striker after his ‘livewire’ display, otherwise our hopes of promotion are looking very bleak.