Man City 3-1 Everton Reaction: Martinez Blasts Referee, Pellegrini Defends Hart

Roberto Martinez blasted the referee's inconsistent decision-making after his Everton side slipped to a 3-1 defeat against Manchester City at the Etihad. The Toffees saw the game slip from their grasp after a foul on Pablo Zabaleta by Seamus Coleman resulted in a decisive penalty, yet a similar first-half shout from the visitors was turned down. The Spaniard believes that the decisions were taken away from his side by referee Jonathan Moss to the extent that it ruined the game and creating an unfair playing field. He said:

"He didn't allow us to compete eye-to-eye with Manchester City €“ if the game had been open it would have been a fantastic game of football. "Consistency in the referees is vital, and I was disappointed that it's the moment Zabaleta gets in the box and falls to the ground, emotions from the crowd you've got two seconds as a referee to assess the incident and decide what it is. "It was an emotional decision but if you want to do that you have to be consistent in both boxes. I don't think two bad decisions makes a good one, but if you watch the two actions and one is a penalty and the other isn't. "It's not just that, it's just the overall performance didn't allow us to be in a Manchester City game away from home."

However, the Toffees manager stopped short of criticising referees in general, conceding that on the whole referees do a good job but Moss's performance today was, in his eyes, sub-standard.

"I don't think we should generalise €“ we've got very, very good referees, we've got outstanding referees and you want to believe that anyone they're going to stick on a football pithch is good enough. "We shouldn't measure all the young referees and all the experienced referees in the same manner, but I think Jon Moss was really disappointing today €“ unfortunately, he killed the game between two very good sides."

Speaking shortly afterward, Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini admitted that it had been a hard decision over whether to start goalkeeper Joe Hart after his error-strewn perfomance against Bayern Munich. The Chilean boss had been debating whether to go with reserve goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon after the midweek fixture but in the end settled on his first-choice stopper. However, he did concede that he had considered dropping the England number one, but felt that Everton's goal today was not his fault and that the media shouldn't be so harsh on his keeper. He said:

"It wasn't a simple decision , it was a very difficult decision but I think that Joe needs the trust of all of us, from me, all of the players, the fans, all of them. "I talked alone with him after the match and of course he feels he didn't do well in the last game, he thinks that he was guilty, but that's more important because today he reflected how strong his character is. "I think that we have score three goals, I think that we had at least four or five chances more to score more goals and I think Everton just scored one goal, and always it's the responsibility of the team. "I think it's not fair to always be analysing Joe Hart, but you must do it because it's your job."

Today's result sees the Citizens up into second place ahead of today's remaining fixtures, two points behind leaders Arsenal €“ Everton's first league defeat means they slip outside the Champions League places and into fifth place.