ALEX Neil questioned referee Andrew Kitchen\u2019s decision to send Zak Sturge off in Millwall\u2019s 2-1 loss to Blackburn Rovers and said he would be \u201cminded\u201d to appeal the defender\u2019s one-match suspension.<\/p>\n
With Millwall 1-0 up in the second half, Yuki Ohashi burst past Jake Cooper and looked to be pulled down by Sturge. After initially appearing to wave play on, referee Andrew Kitchen sent Sturge off, leaving Millwall to hold onto their one-goal lead with ten men for the remaining 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
Substitute Mathias Jorgensen scored a late brace to overturn that lead and condemn the Lions to just their third league loss of 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve watched back the sending off, so I\u2019ve got a little bit of context, and I can discuss it,\u201d Neil said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a sending off. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got Jake [Cooper] recovering, and the lad is shoulder to shoulder with Jake initially. Zak [Sturge] then tries to get back round him and doesn\u2019t try to foul him. Tries to sort of jump over his leg to come back round because the lad cuts him off, and we\u2019ve got Camiel Neghli recovering. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut more importantly, the lad\u2019s touch takes him away from goal initially, and we\u2019ve got three recovering defenders, and it\u2019s about twenty-five, thirty yards out. If you\u2019re going to take your next step into the box and potentially shoot unopposed, my understanding of the rules is then that\u2019s a goal-scoring opportunity. I don\u2019t think he would\u2019ve got that far to get there to get that opportunity to score.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo in my opinion, I didn\u2019t think it was a sending off. That then impacts the game. I\u2019ve already been to see the referee and let him know my thoughts on it, so we\u2019ll see what he thinks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil was asked if the club were planning to appeal Sturge\u2019s suspension. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would certainly be minded to put an appeal in based on what I\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil also clarified what he said to the referee after the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just told him that I disagreed with the decision. I gave him my perspective on the things that happened, and I just said to him, \u2018It\u2019ll be interesting when you see it back to see your views on it, because I\u2019ve watched it back on screen, and these are my thoughts on it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t argue because the problem that you\u2019ve got with the referees is they can\u2019t watch it back immediately, so he can\u2019t watch it and then discuss his view versus my view. All he can tell me is what he thought at the time as it happened. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo he\u2019s working from obviously sixty minutes ago, and I\u2019m working from sixty seconds ago, having seen it live back on the telly. So yeah, it\u2019s probably not quite fair on him, but I\u2019m just giving him my perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALEX Neil questioned referee Andrew Kitchen\u2019s decision to send Zak Sturge off in Millwall\u2019s 2-1 loss to Blackburn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-477421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}