Steve Evans slams ‘horrendous’ red card decision as Posh lose

Peterborough boss Steve Evans labelled the decision to send off Ryan Tafazolli during his side’s 4-0 drubbing at Luton as “horrendous”.

The Posh chief saw Tafazolli dismissed after just 25 minutes for a lunging challenge on Andrew Shinnie, with the hosts taking full advantage as James Collins netted a hat-trick.

Evans said: “It’s a difficult day when you’re playing with 10 men. You just have to regroup and go again, I think we’re unfortunate with that decision though.

“One nil, we’re the better team, it’s game on, then he makes a horrendous decision like that – but it’s not the first horrendous decision that we’ve seen David Coote make.

“The referee told me he didn’t send him off for the tackle but for the follow through.

“In the second half it was about determination but we switched off for two of the goals and then gave the ball away for another.

“I suppose you could say it was a rotten afternoon for us but first and foremost we didn’t perform the way we should have done and didn’t track runners, we didn’t do our job from wide areas on the pitch.”

Luton interim chief Mick Harford admitted he had not seen the incident back, but was quick to praise his squad after picking up a first win of his temporary spell in charge.

He added: “I was over there and probably the closest one was the linesman, he’s given the decision, I honestly cannot say whether it was a red card or not.

“I haven’t looked back on the tape, I’m just guided by what the officials did. You get a man sent off, it does give you a leg up, so anything you need to get a victory.

“All credit to the players, they were absolutely different class in terms of the way they’ve trained, the way they’ve gone about things, the way they’ve acted since we lost our manager.

“They’ve been totally and thoroughly professional and I take my hat off to them.

“The three games I’ve been in charge I couldn’t be prouder of them, each and every one of them.”

Town opened the scoring after eight minutes when Andrew Shinnie found Jack Stacey and he picked out Collins to net from close range.

The visitors were then reduced to 10 men and Luton made them pay with a second goal just two minutes later, Collins hammering home another Stacey cross.

Town’s top scorer had his treble after 53 minutes, fed by Kazenga LuaLua.

Collins should have had a fourth, skying over the crossbar, but Luton did bag another with LuaLua threading the ball to Luke Berry and he spun his man before slotting home.