Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert was furious with referee Kevin Friend, accusing the official of costing his team a point at Stamford Bridge last night in Villa’s 2-1 loss to Chelsea.
Villa played their socks off last night and managed to battle back and cancel out and own goal scored by defender Antonio Luna, but a second half Ivanovic header sealed victory for the Blues.
Lambert felt that the winning goalscorer should have earlier been sent off after hitting Christian Benteke with an elbow, and thought that Villa should have been awarded a penalty after the ball hit John Terry’s arm in the box only to see the referee wave the appeal off.
“I think it’s there for everybody to see,” he told Sky Sports.
“He has missed two huge moments. I saw it at the time. How you can miss that magnitude of decision is beyond me.”
“It’s clearly an elbow on Christian, I think it’s a sending-off and the referee is in the vicinity to do it, and the penalty I think is a penalty.
Lambert added: “It’s easy to sit here with sour grapes and all that sort of thing, (but) I thought my team were outstanding.
“I don’t think we deserved to lose the game. I think we’ve been done by two big decisions that were wrong.
