Melbourne Victory head coach Tony Popovic says his club will be seeking clarification from Football Australia following a number of refereeing decisions he feels went against his side in their 1-0 home loss to Central CoastMariners.
The game, which saw Central Coast secure their first ever away win against Victory at AAMI Park, certainly had it’s flash points as the home side finished the contest with nine men following the dismissals of both Roderick Miranda and Jordi Valadon.
“Look we’ll certainly look for clarification on all the decisions,” said a frustrated Popovic during his post-match press conference.
“You know, he’s a young, up-and-coming referee and we’ve had him a couple of times recently and it hasn’t gone our way.”
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The Mariners also saw substitute Ronald Barcellos sent off late in the game following a VAR review which upgraded his yellow to a red following a bad tackle on Connor Chapman.
However it was an incident in the 64th minute of the match which drew particular criticism from Popovic at full-time as he believes Central Coast forward Angel Torres should have been sent off following a clash of heads with Chapman.
“They reviewed it and they deemed it not to be a red,” said Popovic when discussing the flashpoint.
“Normally when you see contact like that you’d expect a red card but we didn’t get that.”
“We had a similar one with Jason Geria clashing, well, challenging for a ball (against Melbourne City). It’s a head clash but he got a yellow card so it was a little bit surprising that. Maybe they deemed that a similar challenge…”
Next up on Popovic’s list of grievances from the game was referee Tim Danaskos’ decision to dish out a straight red card to substitute Jordi Valadon for the denial of a clear goalscoring opportunity.
“That one’s a tough one for me to understand because Jordi is not the last man,” said the Victory head coach.
“I saw it live and he wasn’t the last man, I didn’t even think it was a foul and the ref didn’t give it as a foul.
“The surprising part for me is that he went to look at VAR and deemed that as last man but Jason Geria is clearly the last man.
He continued: “Had he not looked at it, okay you can make a decision, but once he reviewed it, I’m really surprised that he gave that.”
The defeat at AAMI Park leaves Victory sat in third spot on the ladder, now three points behind Mark Jackson’s Mariners in second and six behind league leaders Wellington Phoenix.
Furthermore, defeat was Victory’s second in the space of four games and they will now be without skipper Roderick Miranda for Sunday’s trip to Queensland when they take on Brisbane Roar.
