Barton available for Blades clash

12 April 2012

Manchester City have launched an immediate appeal against Joey Barton's red card, which has cleared the midfielder for the crucial Boxing Day visit to Sheffield United.

Barton was dismissed by referee Mike Riley four minutes from the end of City's 2-0 home defeat to Bolton after he lunged at Abdoulaye Faye close to the touchline. From his immediate reaction, it was obvious Barton could not believe the decision and manager Stuart Pearce has backed City's desire to challenge the verdict.

"It was not a sending off in my book," said Pearce. "If we didn't feel Joey had a leg to stand on we wouldn't appeal, but the most we felt the tackle deserved was a yellow."

He added: "It was just a bit of frustration taking over and when the red was produced, the Bolton players were as surprised as us."

Barton's dismissal, which now threatens to rule him out of the Premiership encounters West Ham and Everton, plus the FA Cup tie at Sheffield Wednesday, capped a miserable afternoon for the Blues, who were undone by two goals from Nicolas Anelka, who remains their record signing.

To make matters worse, City had what Pearce felt was a perfectly good Paul Dickov goal disallowed when Riley and his assistant ruled the Scot's header had not crossed the line before Jussi Jaaskelainen clawed it out.

"It was only a foot over," observed the former England skipper. "Maybe it has to hit the back of the net before it gets given."

Bolton boss Sam Allardyce, a long-time advocate of goal-line technology, refused to offer an opinion as to whether he felt City had scored, preferring instead to praise the brilliance of Jaaskelainen, whose agility ensured there was a decision to make in the first place.

"We talk about key moments in games and that was undoubtedly one," said Allardyce.

"When we needed him to, Jussi pulled off a massive save and that is one of the major reasons why we won the game."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in