Bristol City head coach Charlotte Healy thought Birmingham City could have gone down to ten players in the first half of their WSL2 clash.
Birmingham were 2-1 up at half-time courtesy of a Simone Magill brace and went on to score three more in the second half from Lily Crosthwaite, Christie Harrison-Murray and Batcheba Louis to hand out a resounding 5-1 thrashing to the Robins.
Maria Farrugia scored Bristol City’s only goal of the game.
But Healy said afterwards if there had been a first-half red card for loan signing Lucy Newell – a player she knows well from their shared time at Manchester United – then things might have been different.
Instead, the 18-year-old defender picked up just a booking in the 39th minute and was replaced by Neve Herron for the second half.
“Lucy should be off,” Healy said to Bristol City’s club website after the match, adding that the fourth official said that in his opinion it was a red card. “It’s not given, so we’re disappointed with that, so again right on half time if she’s off, she goes down to ten, it’s a different game.”
Charlotte Healy: A really poor performance from us today
But Healy also refused to blame a single decision for the heavy loss – saying that her side had created plenty of chances, and needed to perform better when it came to converting them as well as defending.
“I thought it was a really open game, to be honest, I think it could have been 5-5 at half time. A lot of chances, a lot of transition in the first half, but just really disappointed, really, really poor performance from us today.
“We knew what we were going to get from Birmingham, we knew how fast they were going to start, and we gave ourselves a mountain to climb. We had chances, we had some big chances in the first half and we didn’t take them. We are disappointed with that.
“We were still in the game at half-time, but we had to take our chances and we had to defend better than we did. We knew if we weren’t at our very best, I said it before the game, if we weren’t at our very best today, we’d be hurt by Birmingham, and that was exactly what happened.”
Bristol City now have the chance to bounce straight back when they host Portsmouth on Sunday, 14th September.
