Hull City boss Phil Brown hit back at the 'ridiculous' decision to send off defender Sam Ricketts as his side went down 4-1 to Sunderland.
Ricketts was dismissed by referee Mike Riley for two yellow cards just three minutes after Kieran Richardson's deflected strike had given the Black Cats a 2-1 lead at the KC Stadium.
The left-back picked up his second caution following a lunging tackle on Phil Bardsley but Brown was adamant it was not even a foul by Ricketts, let alone a booking.
"It's a ridiculous decision. The lad took the ball cleanly, the linesman is less than five yards away and does not raise his flag and yet Mr Riley decides to come brandishing cards for some reason.
"The ball is still in play and has gone 15-20 yards down the line so he has obviously got the ball. Their player made a meal of it but that's his prerogative. It wasn't even a foul."
The Tigers manager admitted his side were probably a little gung ho in their approach as they tried to go for the win with the game evenly poised at 1-1.
"We were too open if anything and I'll take the criticism for that. We were trying to force the pace and if we had got our noses in front there was only ever going to be one winner.
"But when they went ahead it came from a deflected shot and you take a chance when you have a pop at goal and it's obviously gone in.
"Unfortunately then we had a sending off, we went down to ten men, altered the formation; the game was so open but they had the extra man and they used it and got the third and the fourth against us."
Brown also conceded his side had not been at their best.
"In the first half we played some good stuff and got ourselves back in the game with a Nick Barmby goal but we huffed and puffed to a certain extent and did not threaten them with anything like the quality we have produced in other games," Brown said.
"We asked for the level of performance to be raised at half-time and we didn't quite do that. We did not bring our best performance to the table."
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