Sir Alex Ferguson accused referee Mark Clattenburg of losing control during Man Utd's defeat at Bolton.
United boss believes Clattenburg lost control
Sir Alex Ferguson accused referee Mark Clattenburg of losing control during the first half of Manchester United's defeat at Bolton.
The Red Devils boss, who was incensed by a number of challenges from the home in a feisty opening 45 minutes, was sent to the stands at the interval after making his feelings known to the official.
Nicolas Anelka scored the only goal of the game after 11 minutes, capitalising on an error by Gerard Pique, and although United improved after the break they could not find a way past Jussi Jaaskelainen.
And Ferguson felt Clattenburg failed to sufficiently penalise Bolton for their aggressive play, with one Kevin Davies challenge on Patrice Evra particularly angering the United boss, who could now be in hot water with the Football Association for his comments.
Shambles
The Scot told
Sky Sports: "It was a feisty game, I think they set an aggressive tone. You look for some protection from the referee, we didn't get it, and it became a shambles in the first-half. There was foul after foul after foul.
"I told him (Clattenburg) exactly what I thought and he didn't like it. Some referees don't like the truth. I just told him how bad I thought he was in the first half, the game was becoming a shambles.
"They battled for their lives, they're down at the bottom of the league, we knew that is part of their game. I thought we should have got more protection from the referee, but we didn't get that and it was a battle.
"We got embroiled ourselves before half time, giving silly fouls away, which we didn't want to do. We wanted to keep the momentum of the game going, keep passing the ball and use our intelligence to beat teams like that."
Chances
Ferguson accepted his team did not create enough to deserve anything from the game and has now called for them to go on another lengthy unbeaten run.
He added: "Fortunately in the second half, Bolton cooled down. They defended very deeply, we had a lot of possession without really making any chances and you can't say we deserved to win the game because we didn't make enough chances to win it.
"We do have to take defeats as part of the game, we have to bounce back, because we've got the players with the quality and determination to do that.
"Hopefully we can go on another long run like we did after our last defeat to Manchester City."