Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure would prefer to play “without a referee” in Thursday’s derby with Manchester United after criticising the standard of officiating in the FA Cup semi-final defeat by Arsenal.<\/p>\n
Referee Craig Pawson ruled out Sergio Aguero’s first-half strike at Wembley.<\/p>\n
Replays suggested the goal should have stood and City went on to lose the game 2-1 after extra time.<\/p>\n
“I think the referees have to stop this,” said Toure.<\/p>\n
“I am very disappointed. It is not the first time, there have been a couple of times.<\/p>\n
“Maybe on Thursday we are going to have a better referee or maybe play without a referee – I’d prefer that.”<\/p>\n
Officials ruled that Leroy Sane’s cross had gone out of play before reaching Aguero.<\/p>\n
The Argentina striker later did score to put City ahead but goals from Nacho Monreal and Alexis Sanchez sent Arsenal into May’s FA Cup final, where they will meet Chelsea.<\/p>\n
Defeat means City’s focus switches to the Premier League. They are currently fourth but United will leapfrog them if they win on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It is a very big game, an important game,” added Toure.<\/p>\n
“We have to do that job and we will see what can happen. We hope we are going to have a good referee.”
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure would prefer to play “without a referee” in Thursday’s derby with Manchester United after criticising the standard of officiating in the FA Cup semi-final defeat by Arsenal. Referee Craig Pawson ruled out Sergio Aguero’s first-half strike at Wembley. Replays suggested the goal should have stood and City went on to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}