Birmingham City v Sheffield Wednesday: EFL referee opens up on big decisions during Championship game and error - admitting 'I didn't do quite as well'
The referee of Birmingham City’s clash against Sheffield Wednesday has opened up on big decisions during the Championship game - and an error made.
EFL referee Matt Donohue has revealed his reasoning for a variety of decisions he made during Birmingham City's frustrating 2-2 draw with Sheffield Wednesday. Speaking on Sky Sports Mic'd Up programme the official gave insight into situations.
It was an eventful match that saw five players booked and several contetious decisions. Donohue made a call in the first half that Koumas had fouled Wednesday right back Liam Palmer as he chased the ball down the left wing.
Koumas recovered his footing first and sped off to retrieve possession in a dangerous position - only for Donohue to blow up. The referee admitted that was the wrong call.
He said: "This is one we will probably look back on afterwards and maybe reconsider how we move forward with this sort of decision. At the time I felt the slip was from the attacker bringing the defender down and I gave Palmer the free kick.
"But when you look at it, it was the defender that slipped first and it was actually a little bit unlucky from Birmingham's point of view that Koumas didn't get a chance to progress with the ball. This is definitely one we look back on and try and reflect upon.
"We have got a really robust system in place now, with the coaching team we have got we analyse these sort of incidents. We had a coach in the ground on the evening and he mentioned this would be a decision to look at.
"I had another coach that was viewing the game on the red button and when I had a little chat with him on the way home in the car he highlighted this incident. Where am I looking next? What am I looking at? If the ball is going down the wing to look at that next possible challenge. That's probably what I didn't do quite as well there."
Donohue went on to reflect at what was a fairly obvious second half judgement when Patrick Roberts was cautioned for pulling back Jamal Lowe. He said: "Most people in football would accept this was one of the more straightforward calls we have got, Patrick seemingly admitted that with his body language.
"Everybody accepted that was a yellow card." Donohue then goes on to discuss an incident in which Cochrane looked groggy after going up for a header from a Wednesday free kick. He tells the Blues left back he has to leave the field for 30 seconds because the game was stopped for a head injury.
He said: “It’s a really tricky one we’re facing at the moment. At the start of the year there was a slight protocol change where a player has to go off for 30 seconds if the game is stopped for a serious head injury.
“This was a situation when we’ve tried to analyse it. Cochrane has gone up for an aerial challenge and he’s holding his head at the very start of that. We’ve realised we’ve got a potential head injury and you can hear my colleagues feeding in as well.
“What we’ve got to do in the moment is make a decision about whether we feel that injury is serious enough to stop the game, who’s got the ball when we’re stopping it and how that is going to impact. I can feel frustrations then, with the player, who is saying he’s not injured – but we’ve got a duty of care and a player welfare issue.
“But while you can see the frustration from Cochrane and from Allsop, actually there’s that level of respect so when we explained it, explained the reason why we stopped it, there wasn’t really any further argument.”