Tony Mowbray furious with ’embarrassing’ refereeing decisions in Blackburn draw

Tony Mowbray described the officiating at Ewood Park as “embarrassing” after Blackburn’s six-match winning streak came to an end following a goalless draw with Huddersfield.

Nullified by the Terriers’ defensive solidarity, Rovers were restricted to few chances, with Reda Khadra’s strike against the frame of the goal the closest they came.

Mowbray was incensed that referee Keith Stroud waved away Ben Brereton Diaz’s first-half penalty claims and was booked for his protests.

Blackburn are up to second in the Sky Bet Championship table after making it six unbeaten at home, but they failed to take full advantage of postponements for Bournemouth and Fulham, and Mowbray made his feelings on the standard of the refereeing clear.

He said: “I don’t want to sit here and hammer the referees. I don’t know what game they watch, that’s all. It’s embarrassing.

“You’ve got to know when a foul is a foul. You’ve got to understand it.

“Keith’s a pretty experienced referee and I thought he got a lot wrong today. Like us, they watch the Premier League and see the carnage going on with VAR at the moment.

“Who knows what a foul is and what isn’t a foul, and they try to be too clever sometimes.

“I watched the Brereton penalties. It’s two penalties, never mind one. The first one, if Ben goes over because the ball goes over because the boy makes contact, it’s a penalty, he can’t deny it.

“Yet Ben stays on his feet. He’s punished for being an honest kid who wanted to go through and ram it into the net. Hopefully he’s somewhere else next week.”

Huddersfield remain sixth after a performance of real substance in trying conditions and without boss Carlos Corberan, who has tested positive for Covid.

The result, which made it four unbeaten away, was earned thanks to “fighting spirit”, according to coach Danny Schofield.

He said: “We knew we would be defending during the game due to their attacking threat.

“I think the structure in defence was really good, changed things a little bit, defended the space really well.

“We rode our luck at times on certain occasions but we’ve got a real good group of players who have got a real fighting spirit. They typify the Terriers spirit and that helped us get the point today.

“They (the central defenders) are developing a real relationship between all three, plus Lee Nicholls. Understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses, so it’s progressing really nicely.

“We identified that Blackburn are fantastic in attack, have a lot of good players.

“We identified that if we lost the ball in the centre of the pitch, they would attack with speed. We tried to nullify that, although they did at times.

“We try to prepare as well as we can and we’re doing alright at the minute.”