Espanyol boss Mauricio Pochettino blamed the referee for his side’s 2-1 home loss to Real Zaragoza.
Helder Postiga scored a late winner to add to Apono’s penalty as Zaragoza rallied from a half-time deficit against 10-man Espanyol, who had Juan Albin dismissed shortly after the break.
However, Pochettino believed Albin’s sending off changed the course of the match and he was particularly critical of referee Jose Luis Paradas.
“The cards were quite severe, Albin’s first and also Wakaso’s yellow. We cannot be satisfied or happy,” he told a Press conference.
“It’s clear that the penalty upset all our plans and changed the circumstances of a game that we had controlled.
“It was pretty harsh punishment because we deserved to have got a draw playing 45 minutes with a man less.
“One incident changed the game. We were a man down and from that point we didn’t play badly.
“But the referee was not good. It’s a big disappointment because when the game started nobody could have predicted this ending.
“However, you need to concentrate fully throughout the whole 90 minutes and, as against Mallorca last week, we paid dearly for that,” he concluded.
