Nigel Pearson ‘sick’ as Huddersfield Town penalty decision goes against Bristol City

Nigel Pearson believes that Bristol City should have been awarded a penalty in their goalless draw with Huddersfield Town on Tuesday night.

Mark Sykes was barged by Josh Ruffels from Sam Bell’s cross in the first-half, but the referee didn’t agree with Pearson’s belief that he should have awarded a penalty. The Robins boss was afforded the opportunity to watch the passage of play back on a pitch side monitor and was irate that the decision went against his side.

City had opportunities to break the Terriers rearguard with Sam Bell, Mark Sykes, Cam Pring and Andy King all having chances in the first-half. Huddersfield nearly snatched the three points late on with Jack Rudoni denied by Max O’Leary and Andi Weimann having to clear off of the line.

"A penalty in which I'm sick of talking about it," said Pearson to BBC Radio Bristol in his post-match interview, bringing up the missed penalty in his assessment.

"These officials they like to talk about natural or normal football contact whatever that means ayet they would give it if it was outside the box but inside the box they don't have the courage to give decisions. It’s unfortunate I am afraid.

City have scored two goals in their last four matches, both of which have been penalties against Hull City and Sunderland, but have failed to find the back of the net in open play. Pearson’s men failed to break down Manchester City in their FA Cup tie last week despite making chances, and also drew a blank against Cardiff in the Severnside Derby last Saturday. In both matches, they had opportunities but failed to to take them.

In tonight’s match, City had nine goal attempts with five landing on target and they had an Expected Goals (xG) of 0.81, which is less than what it was against Cardiff.

Pearson added: "We've had enough opportunities to win the game but again, we go another game without scoring. It's something we need to find a solution to pretty quickly.

"The game against Hull and the goal against Sunderland were penalties, and we've created stuff in open play but we've just not converted them. We need to start getting that clinical edge again.

"It's a missed opportunity for us until late on they didn't really create anything of note. We were well on top, it's frustrating because those are the types of games which have been the ones this season where we've been a bit wasteful in terms of collecting points. No disrespect to them.

'A game we should win in all honesty. We've created chances. We're struggling to convert chances when they come at the minute, that is one of the problems that we have. I thought we were on top for the majority of the game. We put the game at risk with one or two poor decisions late on where we needed to control the game and didn't.”