Angry Chelsea boss blasts Clattenburg
Roberto Di Matteo accused referee Mark Clattenburg of ruining Chelsea’s incident-filled match against Manchester United.
And Chelsea have lodged a complaint with the Premier League match delegate over the alleged use of “inappropriate language” by Clattenburg towards two of their players.
Clattenburg sent two Chelsea players off and allowed United’s winner at Stamford Bridge to stand despite goalscorer Javier Hernandez being in an offside position.
The Blues boss had few quibbles with Branislav Ivanovic’s dismissal but was unhappy at the second yellow card awarded to Fernando Torres for an alleged dive, despite the player appearing to be fouled by United’s Jonny Evans.
Di Matteo said: “The second yellow for Fernando was not one. It was a foul for us and he probably should have booked Evans.
“Fernando put the ball between Evans’s legs, he was through and he was kicked in the shin. Whatever you want to think, it’s a foul and a booking for the other player.
“The key decisions were wrong. At 2-2 we looked like the team that were going to win the game. It was a good game between two good teams and the officials ruined it.”
Di Matteo felt intense matches at Tottenham last weekend and at Shakhtar Donetsk in midweek played a part in Chelsea’s slow start to the match – they were 2-0 down after just 12 minutes.
“Today we had a poor start. But we’ve had a tough week with three games and a long, long trip to Ukraine,” he said.
“After the first 20 minutes we regained our rhythm and played the way we can and the way we want to play.”
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